The downside of a high red blood cell count is that it can lead to a significant increase in blood viscosity, which slows down blood flow and may lead to thrombotic complications such as cerebral infarction, acute myocardial infarction, and pulmonary embolism.
Red blood cells are one of the important tangible cell components in the blood, and when the red blood cell count is significantly elevated, the blood concentration rises leading to increased viscosity. This is when the flow of blood may slow down significantly and thrombus formation within the blood vessels becomes easy.
The thrombus formed in the blood vessels will flow with the blood to the heart, brain, lungs and other important tissues and organs of the blood vessels and block the blood vessels, which will lead to ischemia of these tissues and organs, that is to say, acute cerebral infarction, acute myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism, and other serious thrombotic diseases, and the condition of serious patients may be life-threatening.
It is recommended that patients with elevated red blood cell counts should go to the hematology department in time to complete bone marrow aspiration, bone marrow biopsy, JAK2V617F gene test and other tests to identify the specific cause of the disease, and under the guidance of the physician to target the cause of the disease treatment.