Mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC)
Blood count (CBC) ·Also called: MCHC, hemoglobin concentration
What it is
MCHC compares the haemoglobin in the sample with the volume the red cells occupy. It answers a different question from MCH: not how much pigment a cell carries, but how concentrated that pigment is within the cell.
Why your vet measures it
A genuinely low MCHC means cells are under-filled, which is the fingerprint of iron shortage or a marrow producing young, still-maturing cells. A high MCHC, on the other hand, is nearly always artificial — red cells cannot physically hold more pigment than they already do.
What a high result can mean
- Haemolysis — free pigment released from broken cells during or after collection, the usual explanation
- Lipaemia, where fat in the sample interferes with the reading
- Heinz bodies in cats, which the analyser can misread
What a low result can mean
- Iron deficiency anaemia
- A strongly regenerative anaemia in which many circulating cells are still immature and not yet fully loaded
Dogs and cats differ
Cats form Heinz bodies more readily than dogs — after onion or garlic exposure, paracetamol, propylene glycol, or with diabetes and hyperthyroidism — and those inclusions can push MCHC up artificially on a feline sample.
Questions worth asking your vet
- Was the sample haemolysed or lipaemic?
- Is it worth repeating on a fresh sample before we read anything into this?
Related terms
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