What tests should I do?

summary

When the body is abnormal, we choose to go to the hospital for examination, but what should we examine? When we want to check whether he or she is suffering from several diseases, the most important thing is to depend on the possibility of the examinee suffering from this disease. Because of the endless number of diseases that can be tested, we can not check all of them.

What tests should I do?

There are many different ways to test the possibility of the same disease, so we have to choose the "most suitable" examination method. But what is the "best fit"? Generally speaking, the most ideal test method is absolutely safe, and 100% accurate, and the cost is not much, but unfortunately such a test method is unique.

Therefore, safety must be the primary consideration in routine examination. However, in order to achieve a proper balance between the accuracy of the test method and the required resources, it is necessary to make some trade-offs. The most important consideration is the patient's chance of suffering from a certain disease, the safety factor he hopes to achieve (i.e. the accuracy of the test method) and the resources he is willing to undertake.

For example, we want to know whether a patient has colorectal cancer. The safest, risk-free and low-cost test is fecal occult blood test, but the accuracy of this test is much lower than that of colonoscopy. If the patient is an elderly person (generally over 50 years old), has a family history of colorectal cancer, has frequent bleeding in the stool, or requires a high safety factor, we would prefer to recommend colonoscopy to the patient, but most of the time the patient's requirements are absolutely idealistic (of course, it's human nature!), We can't do it.

matters needing attention

I just want to remind you that some of the "cancer indicators" blood tests in the market are very popular because they are convenient, simple and inexpensive. But its main purpose is to track the progress or recurrence of a certain cancer after surgery, chemotherapy or electrotherapy. If you want to infer whether a subject suffers from a certain kind of disease based on this test result alone, its utility is extremely low, and it may be misleading!