What Is MCH In Blood Test
What is MCH?
MCH is acronym for “mean corpuscular hemoglobin.” An MCH value refers to the average quantity of hemoglobin present in a single red blood cell. Hemoglobin is the protein in your red blood cells that transports oxygen to the tissues of your body.
Your MCH value is related to two other values, mean corpuscular volume (MCV) and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC). Together, MCH, MCV, and MCHC are sometimes referred to as red blood cell indices.
MCV is a measurement of the average size of your red blood cells. MCH results tend to mirror MCV results. This is because bigger red blood cells generally contain more hemoglobin while smaller red blood cells tend to have less.
MCHC is a calculation of the amount of hemoglobin per unit volume in a single red blood cell. The difference between MCH and MCHC is that the MCHC measurement takes the volume or size of the red blood cell into account while MCH does not.
