Your health care may include medical tests like blood tests and x-rays. When you talk with your doctor, it is helpful to know a few things about medical tests. To learn more, watch the video below, keep reading, or take a quiz of your knowledge.
To understand your medical needs, your doctor will consider different kinds of information, like your age, your symptoms, your medical history, and your physical exam.
Often, that information is all your doctor needs to make medical decisions.
Sometimes, your doctor may need more information and may order one or more medical tests to get this information.
A MEDICAL TEST CAN BE HELPFUL TO:
If you have new symptoms like chest pain or bleeding, a medical test may help your doctor make a diagnosis - that is, to figure out what is or is not causing these symptoms.
A medical test can help your doctor check if a known medical condition like diabetes or kidney disease is getting better or worse.
Even if you have no symptoms, a medical test can allow your doctor to check for conditions like colon cancer, HIV infection, or high cholesterol.
MEDICAL TESTS MAY ALSO HAVE DOWNSIDES:
Medical tests and treatment can take up time and cost you money. They can also cause stress, discomfort, or, in rare cases, physical injuries. Medical tests are not always accurate. Sometimes, they can lead to extra tests or treatments that may not help you.
Here are two ways the results of medical tests may surprise you and potentially lead to downsides:
Sometimes a test will come back as "positive", suggesting that you have a disease, when you don't actually have it. This false alarm is called a "false positive".
Some medical tests are more likely to have false positives. These include mammograms for women and prostate cancer tests for men. These false alarms may cause stress. They can also lead to a "cascade" or series of follow-up tests and treatments that may not help you.
Sometimes a medical test finds something that you weren't looking for.
For example, a set of blood tests like a "complete blood count" may show one result that is a little higher or a little lower than the "normal" range. This could be for reasons unrelated to your health.
To give another example, a chest scan to look for a lung infection may show a small lump in your thyroid gland. These unexpected results are common on scans and are most often nothing to worry about. But it can be hard not to worry and want to take some action.
The potential benefits and downsides of medical tests are different for different medical tests and depend on some other factors.
