What are the differences between the different types of Alkaline Phosphatase (ALP) tests for laboratory blood work?
I went to a medical laboratory to get yearly blood work done. In addition to testing for some specific “me” things that I’m monitoring, I want to get a CMP (Comprehensive Metabolic Panel).
I’m in a foreign country where I don’t really speak the language. When I said that I wanted blood work done at the lab, the agent at the front desk handed me a form with a lot of boxes to choose what I wanted to get. There is no “CMP” option, so I tried to tick the boxes for the 14 blood tests that compose a CMP, but I got stuck when I tried to check the box for the ALP (Alkaline Phosphatase) test – because there were 3 boxes:
- Fost. Alcalina
- Fost. Ácida Total
- Fost. Ac. Prostatica
What are each of these, and which of these three is the “normal” ALP test that should be included in a CMP?
Possibly helpful: if you go to the English wikipedia article for ALP, then you click “languages” and change to the “Español” version of the same article, it takes you to the Spanish version wikipedia article for ALP.
The information in that article may be helpful.