Polite Dissent

Batman: Gotham County Line #2
Steve Niles, writer
Scott Hampton, penciler

Batman is feeling tired and light-headed. He suspects that he has been drugged, so he draws a sample of blood and runs it through the Batcomputer. The computer returns the results quickly (must be nice). What did they show?

Glucose 60-109 mg/dl.

Interesting how Batman’s advanced Batcomputer can only give a range for this test, and not a specific number. Anyway, 60-109 milligrams-per-deciliter is the normal range for a fasting glucose (blood sugar) test. A lower result would suggest some kind of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), while a high number would suggest a high blood sugar (hyperglycemia), and possibly diabetes (or possibly a recent meal).

Electrolytes normal.

This tells us that Batman’s sodium, potassium, chloride, and bicarbonate are all normal. Not a big surprise since he was not showing symptoms of high- or low-levels in any of these.

Blood Urea Nitrogen normal.

A test that with the creatinine gives a quick snapshot of how the kidneys are performing. It’s strange that the creatinine is not mentioned here. In fact, the glucose, electrolytes, blood urea nitrogen, and creatinine make up a standard chemistry panel known as a Chem 7 (or SMA-7 or BMP), so it seems the Batcomputer left something out.
Blood urea nitrogen is usually called the BUN. Don’t make the same rookie med student mistake I made: BUN is pronounced “B-U-N”, not “bun.”

AST, ALT, SGOT, SGPT, and GGT, and Alkaline Phosphatase levels normal to low.

There’s redundancy here. AST (aspartate aminotransferase) is the same thing as SGOT (serum glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase), and ALT is (alanine transaminase) another name for SGPT (serum glutamic pyruvic transaminase). In medical school, we were taught that AST and ALT were the more “modern” names, but I notice that many laboratories are going back to the traditional SGOT and SGPT. Regardless, the ALT, AST, GGT (gamma glutamyl transpeptidase) and Alkaline Phosphatase are all liver enzymes. They are elevated in cases of liver damage or disease (trauma, hepatitis, or heavy alcohol consumption, for instance). Batman’s reading of “normal to low” suggests that there is nothing wrong with the liver.

No drug metabolites detected.

Of course, you can only test for drugs that are known to exist. There are no testing assays for brand new or experimental drugs. Just a thought.

Batman’s blood tests are normal. His approach was what I like to call a “shotgun approach” to testing. Draw a whole bunch of labs and see if by chance anything is abnormal. It’s not the best way to conduct medicine as it gives you too many false postives and whole bunch of wasted time. He may be a great detective, but he needs to leave the medicine to the trained professionals (those that he doesn’t exile to Africa anyway).