Is it okay to have a routine physical examination in the afternoon?

Most routine physical examinations are recommended to be arranged in the morning. However, if you only do items that do not require fasting, or if special circumstances are coordinated in advance, you can still do it in the afternoon without blocking the morning time.

The core reason is that several items that require fasting are delayed, such as fasting blood sugar, blood lipids, liver and kidney function, and gallbladder examination during abdominal B-ultrasound, which all require fasting for 8-12 hours to ensure accurate results. If you do a full set of physical examinations in the afternoon, unless you have been abstaining from water since midnight the day before until the afternoon of the next day, let’s not talk about whether you are hungry or faint. After more than ten hours of body metabolism, the indicators themselves will fluctuate, and they will not reflect the normal physical state. If you are really hungry and suffer from hypoglycemia, the gain will outweigh the losses. Last week, I accompanied a friend to the physical examination center, and I met a young man who didn't do any preparations in advance, thinking that he could get a full set of tests in the afternoon. He came here after being hungry all morning. After the blood was drawn, he squatted in the rest area and felt dizzy. The nurse stuffed him with two pieces of candy before he recovered. The doctor also told him that the blood sugar and blood lipid indicators were likely to be inaccurate after fasting for too long, and he would have to take another test on another day. What a waste of time.

But that’s not to say, many physical examination centers have already opened afternoon sessions, specifically for people who only do non-fasting items. My colleague couldn't get a weekend morning appointment last week, so he specially made an appointment for Sunday afternoon. He agreed with the agency in advance to skip fasting blood collection and abdominal ultrasound, and only did chest X-ray, electrocardiogram, thyroid ultrasound, and gynecological screening. He finished it in one afternoon. Later, he took two blood supplements separately on a weekday morning and didn't delay much.

There are also many practitioners who hold different opinions and feel that as long as the fasting duration is strictly controlled, people with special schedules are more suitable to do it in the afternoon. For example, nurses who work long night shifts and programmers on cross-border projects usually work day and night. The morning happens to be their deep sleep time, so they forcefully get up for a fasting physical examination. Their physical condition after staying up all night is abnormal, and the indicators found are not of high reference value. Instead, they wait until they have slept enough, calculate the fasting time according to their own schedule, and check in the afternoon, and the results are more in line with their daily physical condition.

Anyway, my experience is that if you can spare time in the morning, give priority to the morning, so as to avoid the trouble of splitting up the project to make up for it.； If you really can't spare the time in the morning, you can ask the physical examination center in advance what activities you can do that afternoon, and just choose according to your needs. There is no need to delay a physical examination for more than half a year because of time constraints. That would be a real loss.