Pro-Per™ Way to Stay Healthy: Age and Gender Appropriate Screening Tests

A proactive approach to staying healthy includes undergoing certain screening tests from time to time. These screening tests have been shown to save lives and improve quality of life in a given population.

Screening tests are the tests devised to detect a disease in the early stage. For a test to be offered widely to persons of certain age and gender, it should meet some criteria including:

- The test should look for the disease that is a common problem in a certain population. For example, life time cumulative risk for breast cancer for women is 10% and life time cumulative risk for colon cancer is 6%. These numbers justify screening for these two diseases.
- The screening test should be easily doable.
- An effective treatment should be available for the disease we screen for.
- An early detection by screening should make appreciable impact on survival or quality of life.

Before we go any further, it is very important to understand following points regarding screening tests:
- These recommendations are for people who are at average risk for common diseases. A person at high risk may need to be screened more often or at an age younger than that recommended.
- Effective screening tests exist for certain uncommon diseases. These may not be offered to general population. However, they save precious lives when used in selective cases.
- The screening test recommendations can change from time to time. Different agencies may even have differing views on the same screening test at a given time.
- For the reasons given above, these important screening tests have to be carried out under the guidance of a health care professional.

The recommendations given here in tabulated form are based on information from agency for healthcare research and quality (AHRQ) website and US preventive services task force
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