Routine physical examination report

The core value of a routine physical examination report is to "screen for common chronic disease risks and capture early signs of disease." However, it cannot detect all invisible lesions. 90% of non-critical abnormal indicators will not develop into serious diseases as long as they are adjusted according to the doctor's instructions. There is no need to make your hands shake when you see the arrow.

Last week, I accompanied my uncle to the community physical examination center to get the report. As soon as he turned to the blood lipids page, he saw an upward red arrow floating behind the triglycerides. He stood in the corridor and scrolled through the search software. His face became paler as he scanned it. He pulled me and told me that he was about to have a heart attack and cerebral infarction and that he had to be hospitalized immediately. As a result, the doctor who attended the consultation glanced at the report, raised his head and asked him if he had eaten anything greasy the day before. He hesitated and said that it was his birthday the night before, so he ate half a pot of braised pork sausage and drank two bottles of cold beer. The doctor just laughed and said that if you go back to a vegetarian diet for two weeks and walk for half an hour every day, you will be basically normal again and nothing will happen.

Really, I have seen too many people go to two extremes in their understanding of physical examination reports. Either they think "this thing is all about IQ tax, my friend's physical examination is normal every year, but last month he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer", or they are an "arrow sensitive body". Even if the platelet density is 0.1 higher in the blood routine, they will be so anxious that they can't sleep all night long.

Let me first talk about those who think physical examinations are useless. It’s not that physical examinations are useless, it’s that the regular package you choose cannot match your risks. Chest X-rays during routine physical examinations can only detect mid- and late-stage lung cancer. Early-stage ground-glass nodules cannot be detected at all. If you smoke all year round and have a family history of lung cancer in your family, you should have a low-dose chest CT. You can’t just use the results of the basic package to say that physical examinations are useless, right? There is also the now controversial issue of "whether or not tumor markers should be added to the physical examination of ordinary people." There is no unified conclusion in the industry: one group believes that ordinary healthy people will only increase their anxiety if they take the test. After all, a mild increase is likely to be a false positive caused by inflammation, staying up late or even eating too much oil the day before. It will be a waste of half a month. ； The other group believes that it is better for people with a family history of cancer to check one more item to have an extra layer of reference, rather than missing out. Both statements are reasonable. It all depends on your own situation. There is no need to argue about right or wrong.

As for panicking when you see the arrow, there is no need to do so. Last time, I stayed up three nights in a row to catch up on a project. I went for a physical the next day and found that my transaminase was twice as high as the normal value. I thought I had hepatitis. However, after sleeping for a week, the reexamination was back to the normal range. I had a meal with a nurse friend at the physical examination center a while ago. She said that their front desk receives dozens of consultation calls every day, and half of them ask questions about physiological increases: uric acid is 10 μmol/L high. If you don’t have gout, just drink more water and avoid beer and seafood. You don’t need to take medicine. ； More than 90% of the types of breast hyperplasia and thyroid nodules that are often detected in girls are caused by staying up late for a long time and being angry. A reexamination is enough every six months to a year. Those loose-knot tea and loose-knot medicines that are so popular are basically subject to IQ tax.

In fact, when you get the report, you don’t need to search online first to scare yourself. First, turn to the health guidance on the last page. Most physical examination centers will mark the indicators that need to be reviewed by a specialist immediately in dark red. If there are no abnormalities marked in red, first recall whether you have done anything “monsterish” in the week before the physical examination: did you stay up late continuously, drank a lot, took medicine for a cold or fever, did you run ten kilometers the day before the physical examination? These factors will cause many indicators to temporarily go red. If you adjust them for two weeks and then review them, they will most likely be normal.

Of course, I don’t want you to ignore the abnormality at all. Last month, a friend who worked on the Internet asked me to read the report. His fasting blood sugar was 6.3, which was a little higher than the upper limit of normal 6.1. There was no red mark. I asked him to drink less milk tea and cola and control his sugar for a month before checking again. But he didn’t take it seriously and continued to have two cups of iced American milk tea with full sugar every day. Three months later, he went to work for a physical examination. The fasting blood sugar directly reached 7.1. He was diagnosed with prediabetes. Now he regrets it so much that he has to prick his finger to test his blood sugar every day before meals.

To put it bluntly, the routine physical examination report is a "staged report card" of your body. If the score is high, don't panic, and if the score is low, don't panic. It's time to make adjustments, and it's time to review and recheck. If you are really not sure, ask a doctor friend for a few questions, which is much more useful than searching online for a long time to scare yourself.