Preventive Screening Saves Lives
Chronic health conditions are very common. In fact, it is believed that around one of two American adults are sufferers of one chronic condition or more. This is information gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the CDC. What people don’t realize is that there exists the ability to prevent these diseases or at least to screen for them early enough so they don’t amount to more serious conditions.
Screening tests don’t have to be expensive. For example, screening for diabetes can be as simple as purchasing a home test kit for around $15 and testing your fasting blood sugar. Doctors’ testing is a bit more expensive but probably not more than $50-$100. In addition, many employees are offering screening tests for their employees for free and many low cost screening programs exist.
Finding out you have an early case of a serious disease can cut down on visits to the emergency room and endless visits to the doctor in order to treat a complicated condition. Health plans, for this reason, are providing incentives for those willing to be screened for diseases in their asymptomatic or early state.
Even so, Preventive care is not something adults often think of. They think nothing of taking their infant in for a shot or for Preventive care and yet they fail to consider the fact that their health is as important as their children’s.
Screening for cancer is especially important. The two most common cancer screening tests include the colonoscopy and the mammogram, which screen for colon cancer and breast cancer, respectively. Screening for colon cancer is recommended at age fifty and yet less than half of all individuals are current in their colorectal screening.
In the same vein, fewer than half of all women eligible to receive a mammogram for breast cancer detection are getting their tests on a regular basis. Most doctors are beginning to screen women for the disease by the age of forty. The risk of dying from a case of breast cancer is reduced by 35 percent among women aged fifty and older.
Diabetic, heart disease and stroke detection are just as important as cancer screening. Diabetes is very common, affecting up to 24 million Americans at any given time. Diabetes is a major contributor to heart disease, kidney disease, amputation of the legs, stroke and blindness. Diabetic screening along with screening for cholesterol and high blood pressure can demonstrate the risk of heart disease before the patient actually develops the condition.
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