Importance of Health Screening Tests

“Health is wealth” so goes the age-old adage!
“When health is lost everything is lost, ” screams another!

Health is securely placed atop the invaluable hierarchy and we all know the reason why! Once health is lost, we become a burden to ourselves, to those around and to the society at large. Therefore, we owe it to ourselves to safe guard our health.

Health screening along with a healthy diet and exercise, is necessary for maintaining good health and a higher quality of life. Health screening and timely or regular testing is vital for detecting tell-tale signs of sickness, for providing the necessary impetus to understand one’s health and make changes whenever necessary.


Screening can help us live longer and healthier lives. Screening essentially helps in identifying diseases in people who do not yet have any symptoms or signs of it.

Mass screening for certain common diseases is often recommended and can be cost effective for a selected community or a country. The goal of such screening is to improve health outcomes, An example is early detection of high blood pressure. Such a detection can help prevent stroke and heart disease by timely start of medication and counseling for lifestyle changes such as losing weight, giving up smoking, cutting down on salt and regular exercises. Another example is Pap smear for early detection of cervical cancer. An early detection of the cancer usually means a very high cure rate. Some mass screening programmes may not improve health outcomes and prostate cancer screening for men is one such example.

The unraveling of human genetic code and advances being made in genetic research has meant that many diseases are getting identified to have a genetic cause. In the near future screening will become even more important. In fact some companies are already offering their services by doing a genetic profile of a person and providing them a risk profile of potential diseases that they maybe prone to..

Selective screening maybe advocated when there is family history or if a person is exposed to risk factors like carcinogens.