Medical Tests: A Practical Guide to Common Tests

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• Table of Contents
• An excerpt from this report

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When your doctor recommends that you have a medical test, you’re likely to have many questions. In the pages of this report, you will find an alphabetical list of common medical tests performed frequently in hospitals, doctors’ offices, and other medical facilities. You’ll learn the purpose of each test, how to prepare for it, how it’s done, what (if anything) you need to do afterward, how soon to expect the results, and what the results mean.

Medical tests fall into two broad categories: screening and diagnostic. Screening tests help identify health problems at an early stage, often before they cause any symptoms. Diagnostic tests confirm the presence of health problems.

Before you have any medical test, make sure you fully understand its purpose. Ask your doctor any questions that are on your mind. You have the right to know what the test will entail and to be informed of alternatives before you decide whether to have the test. Reading this report is a first step toward gathering the information you need and working with your doctor to make informed choices.

Prepared in consultation with Anthony L. Komaroff, M.D., Editor in Chief, Harvard Health Publications, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Senior Physician, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. 52 pages. (updated: 2004)

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Here's an Excerpt from this Medical Test Special Health Report

Medical tests use a variety of techniques to yield important information about the body and its functioning that is impossible to detect from a physical examination. For example, blood or urine tests measure levels of particular cells or chemicals in these body fluids. Imaging tests produce pictures of internal structures that are invisible to the naked eye: your bones, organs, and other tissues. Biopsies remove tissue for laboratory analysis. Many of these tests involve use of a microscope to examine samples of body fluids or tissues to observe things too small to be seen by the naked eye, such as bacteria or cancerous cells.

In a breast biopsy, a doctor removes a sample of tissue from a suspicious area so that a pathologist, using a microscope, can evaluate whether the tissue contains cells that have turned cancerous. Until recently, the only way to do this was with an open surgical biopsy, in which a surgeon makes an incision and removes the suspicious area along with a surrounding margin of normal tissue. Surgical biopsies leave scars and may change the size and shape of the breast. Today, doctors can often use newer techniques, such as fine needle aspiration and core needle biopsy, which have minimal cosmetic effects on the breast. This is a significant advantage, given that four out of five women who have biopsies turn out not to have cancer. If your health care facility does not perform needle biopsies, ask to be referred to one that does, unless there’s a good reason why this procedure is inappropriate for you.

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