At the end of the year, there was a long queue of people who made appointments for medical examinations at the hospital's physical examination center. Most of them are young and middle-aged people aged 30-45, among them, dyslipidemia, thyroid nodules, overweight, fatty liver, etc., are all diseases with a high detection rate.
Many young people will also make an appointment for their parents to have a physical examination online**, but the physical examination items look varied, many people can't understand it, and they don't bother to think about it, so they directly choose the most expensive physical examination items, but the question is, are these physical examination items really necessary?
The doctor said frankly: These 3 examination items are spent on unjust money, and there is really no need to do them.
1. Blood drops to check for cancer
It only takes a drop of blood to detect a disease or even cancer in the body, how does it sound very lofty?
However, in practice, it is very difficult to detect cancer through blood tests, and this level has not yet been reached clinically. At present, the gold standard for diagnosing cancer is still histopathological examination.
Only some early cancer screening items require blood tests, such as serological tumor marker testing, including alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), prostate characteristic antigen (PIC), carcinoembryonic antigen CEA, and carbohydrate antigens CA72-4, CA19-9 and dozens of other items.
When these indicators are abnormally elevated, it does not necessarily indicate cancer, and further comprehensive imaging examinations such as B-ultrasound, CT, and MRI are needed to determine whether there is cancer in the body.
At present, blood tests can mainly screen for diseases caused by changes in blood cells, or diseases that can cause changes in blood cells, such as malnutrition, bacterial or viral infection, anemia, essential polycythemia, hypersplenism, congenital cardiovascular diseases, etc.
2. CT examination for breast cancer
CT is generally not used as a screening method or screening method for breast cancer, CT examination can only see whether there is an obvious lump or nodule in the breast, judge the size, shape, edge of the lump and whether there is calcification in the lump, but cannot find breast cancer.
For breast cancer, the preferred examination methods are mammography, ultrasonography and magnetic resonance, and further diagnosis requires tissue biopsy and pathological examination.
Breast cancer has become the first malignant tumor in women, it is recommended that female friends have a breast examination every 1-2 years, and high-risk groups of breast cancer, such as those with a family history of breast cancer, those who have not given birth or have late children, those who have early menarche or late menopause, and those who are obese, etc., should have a breast examination every year.
3. X-ray for lung cancer
X-rays have limitations in detecting lung cancer, as they can diagnose some lung cancers, but many can be missed.
The main reason is that X-ray is a flat examination method, which cannot distinguish the mediastinum well, and will miss the tumor in the mediastinal part of the patient, and some parts of the lung cancer lesion may be blocked by the heart and large blood vessels, so it is difficult to detect it.
For early screening of lung cancer, non-contrast CT scan of the lungs is recommended. Similarly, X-ray, the contrast and resolution of the non-contrast CT scan of the lungs will be more obvious than the X-ray examination, and can find mass lesions, ground-glass nodules, soft tissue masses or obstructive atelectasis in the lungs.
Of course, even if a lung mass is found on CT examination, it does not prove that it is lung cancer, and further pathological biopsy of the lung mass tissue or flexible bronchoscopy is required to confirm whether it is lung cancer.
For high-risk groups of lung cancer, such as patients over 45 years old with a history of repeated smoking, a family history of lung cancer, and patients with other cancers, it is recommended to do CT screening once a year, and once early lung cancer is found, surgery is recommended as soon as possible**.