Comprehensive examinations – prevention is better than cure
We’d better prevent a disease than cure it. It is less expensive, too. In addition, it costs less. The English word “screening” stands for “preventive medical examinations testing a group of seemingly healthy people to detect the persons showing early signs or symptoms of a disease or a predisposition to a certain disease.
The comprehensive examinations start when a child is born and then they are a routine regular health check up. The comprehensive examinations cease at school leaving age.
You can prevent a wide spectrum of diseases owing to regular annual examinations that are to become your lifelong habit.
Why is prevention crucial?
In Serbia, every year many people fall ill and die of cancer, cardio-vascular diseases and Diabetes mellitus, and the only way to fight these pernicious diseases is – early diagnostics. If and when detected and cured early enough, the disease can be slowed down and in many a case – cured.
Comprehensive preventive examinations.
Following the WHO recommendation, the comprehensive preventive examinations encompass: internal medicine specialist with ECG, spirometry, pulse oximetry, complete laboratory analyses, abdomen ultrasound examination; for women – gynaecologist examination, gynaecologist’s ultrasound, and manual examinations and breast ultrasound examination. The examinations can include additional tests and analyses if need be.
Once a year, it is necessary for you to have blood laboratory analysis, a crucial indicator of your health condition. If your body shows any irregularity, disturbance, imbalance in your health condition, your blood analyses will gear us towards further diagnostics.
Cardio-vascular diseases are widespread in Serbia. Ill-managed hypertension, inadequate physical activity, stress exposure, wrong diet, in combination with hereditary influences, can bring on angina pectoris, heart infarction, brain insult (brain stroke) with complications.
Internal medicine specialist examination with ECG, physician’s advice and right therapy can considerably improve both the outcome of the diseases and the life quality. The abdomen ultrasound is a diagnostic method that is applied to evaluate your abdomen, parenchymatous organs (liver, gall bladder, biliary ducts, pancreas, spleen, kidneys, ureter, urinary bladder).
Frequent occurrence of cancer makes ultrasound examinations a must within the comprehensive examinations routine. Breast cancer is, together with uterine cervix cancer, by far the most frequent women’s malignancy. One our of ten women gets breast cancer. As the statistics show, one out of ten women gets ill. Each year some 3,700 new cases are reported.
Apart from self-examination and the gynaecologist’s manual examination, it is necessary to have an ultrasound breast examination.
Apart from breast cancer in women, most frequent women’s disease is the uterine cervix cancer. The latest findings suggest that one of the most important offender is HPV – Human Papiloma Virus. The disease typically develops several years with no symptoms until it aggravates. Uterine cervix screening is carried out by Papa-Nikolau’s test. All women aged 20-65 are to be covered by screening examination, once in a year without fail. The examinations are the only way to detect the alterations in the early stage when they are easily removed before cancer develops.
Colposcopy is a detailed uterine cervix examination with special microscope called colposcope. If the physician sees anything suspicious during the colposcopy, the physician will take a fragment of the tissue (the sample) from the altered part (biopsy).
The sample is then sent to the laboratory for pathohistological analysis. The alterations detected during the biopsy can be divided into several categories, which helps the physician to decide if any further treatment is needed.
Apart from comprehensive examinations, preventive measures include:.
Vaccinations
There are regular vaccinations against infectious disease (diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles (morbilli), rubella, mumps, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, hepatitis B. There is a vaccination calendar for babies, from their birth on. The vaccinations are mandatory. Apart from them, there is a vaccination of adults against certain diseases as protection – the vaccine against Hepatitis B is now compulsory for all children, but the adults who have not as yet been immunized can be vaccinated as well.
Following the WHO recommendation and the EU directives, once a year, prior to the flu season, inactivated influenza vaccine immunization against influenza in children and adults is carried out.
Comprehensive examinations in combination with vaccination, regular visits to a physician and observance of his advice, are a safe way for you to protect and preserve your health. There is a common-denominator adage in different world languages that, when it comes to immunization, is more than applicable and true: prevention is better than cure.