Quote: (09-21-2012 01:59 PM)chyamor Wrote:
Anyone ever do a Executive Health Exam? Its a full day of body exams
Thorough medical history evaluation
Thorough physical exam
General bloodwork incl. Advanced lab screening
Urinalysis
Chest X-Ray
EKG
Nuclear or standard stress test
Full Body or Heart CAT Scan
Holter Monitor
General and cardiac ultrasound (CIMT Testing)
Pulmonary function testing
Nutritional Counseling
and some other stuff. Is 30 too young to be doing this? Ive never been admitted to a hospital before, dont smoke, not over weight but always good to be proactive.
As my epidemiology professor back in school said: 'The validity of a test is decreased in the absence of disease'
In plain English, if you're not feeling sick, a medical test may turn out positive for illness when there is nothing to treat.
Most medical tests are standardised to a p value of 0.05, in other words all tests are 95% accurate
in the presence of disease. Even under ideal conditions, this means that a medical test has a
5% failure rate. Without the disease present, the accuracy of some tests goes down even lower, meaning you can test positive for a disease you don't have.
Compare this to the engineering disciplines who work to a p value of 0.001 or even up to 0.0001. What that means: if an engineer builds a bridge to a value of 0.0001, then there is only a 0.01% chance of the bridge ever spontaneously collapsing. The guys who build bridges are more concerned about the certainty of your health than medical doctors are.
I'm not good enough at statistics to explain it better than that, it's got to do with the way medical tests are designed in the first place. There is no real test for 'healthiness', meaning you are subjecting yourself to testing for 'diseases' and can thus test false-positive for a disease you don't have.
That said, there are good guidelines available for reliable preventative medicine screening tests, with a low likelihood of false positives:
go to this website:
http://epss.ahrq.gov/ePSS/search.jsp
Fill in your age, gender, smoking background, sexual background.
click 'show recommendations'
print out the recommendations
take it to your doctor, and ask your doctor for a general checkup and to assess your health according to the printout, with specific emphasis on A and B grade recommendations.
Word of warning: a decent checkup should take at least 30 minutes, including history, examination, recommendations for further action; if your doctor is unwilling to book you for that long, then find one who is willing.