How Lab Tests Can Assist Doctors In Determining A Patient's Overall Health
During a doctor's visit, your doctor may decide to do labs based on your symptoms and to research further to help provide a correct diagnosis. It's important to understand lab services and why they might be important for your health.
What Are Lab Services
Lab tests are used to check a person's health and look for anything abnormal. It helps doctors make correct diagnoses by ruling in or out a possible diagnosis. With the correct diagnosis, the doctor recommends the best course of treatment.
What Do Labs Test For?
The lab checks body tissues and/or urine and blood to ensure a person's health is normal. These tests assist the doctor in valuable ways.
- Blood tests help doctors get a better understanding of how well vital organs are working
- Liver
- Thyroid
- Heart
- kidneys
- Blood tests can also help diagnose conditions and diseases
- HIV/AIDS
- Cancer
- Anemia
- Diabetes
- Heart disease
Lab tests are one tool a doctor uses to help find potential problems sooner and for monitoring and screening ongoing conditions.
What Are Common Annual Lab Tests?
While doctors order lab tests as needed to help diagnose or monitor a patient's health, some blood tests can benefit the patient when every year or so.
- Essential nutrients
- Thyroid panel
- Complete blood count
- Metabolic panel
- Inflammatory markers
Having these tests done annually is essential to your overall health. Annual testing can show changes in labs that the doctor can interpret and use to give the patient advice on life changes for better health. They also allow a doctor to find common health conditions, like high blood sugar, early on. This means the patient and doctor can work together to prevent the worsening of conditions and prevent high blood sugar from becoming type 2 diabetes.
Lab tests ordered give the doctor a look into the overall health of a patient. Blood draws for complete blood count (CBC) check the number of and types of cells in the blood. This helps give the doctor a clue into certain health issues and problems a patient may have.
A lab test can test for many other conditions as well. These tests are also used for genetic testing, chromosome testing, cancer blood tests and cholesterol screenings.
If your doctor orders a blood test or other laboratory test, it is to assist in understating of overall health. The results help the doctor make the correct diagnosis. This is essential for the patient to get the best treatment options. Contact a lab for more information regarding lab services.
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