Blood tests have many different uses. They can be used to diagnose a condition, to monitor a particular organ in the body, such as the kidney or liver, and they can also be used to give measurements of bodily processes such as blood sugar or current levels of inflammation.

Screening for an abdominal aortic aneurysm is extremely important. Doctors refer to this as AAA (pronounced "triple-A") screening. It looks for any weakness in the aorta, the biggest blood vessel in your body. This runs from your heart to the center of your chest and your abdomen, delivering oxygenated blood to your tissues and organs. Any weakness (aneurysm) can lead to rupture, which causes a life-threatening bleed into your tummy within seconds. Screening is aimed at detecting disease in those most at risk. Men are at higher risk of developing an AAA, and this increases with age, so men aged 65 and over may be encouraged to get a test. Owing to the risk profile, this screening is not offered routinely to women, men under 65, or if you’ve already received treatment for an AAA.

If you find yourself pregnant and do not wish to keep the baby or have it adopted for any reason, you can seek an abortion to bring the pregnancy to an end, otherwise known as a termination of pregnancy. Abortion laws vary greatly from state to state. If you find yourself with a positive pregnancy test and are unsure of your decision, you do not need to rush into things. You can turn to your partner, trusted friends or family. You might wish to discuss with someone outside your circle, so your doctor can be a good source of guidance and can refer you for maternity or abortion services. Alternatively, you can refer yourself to abortion services, and they will have counselors to talk through your options and the strong emotions it can bring up. An abortion carries less risk the earlier it is carried out. Earlier discussions also allow for more time to think about the right option for you.

The prostate specific antigen (PSA) blood test relates to a man's risk of prostate cancer but unlike other cancers like breast and bowel, there is no routine screening program for prostate cancer in the US. This is because it’s not as straightforward as having a blood test and getting a black-and-white answer: it doesn’t tell you if you have prostate cancer or not. Instead, men over the age of 50 can ask their doctor for a test (or tests every so often) after discussion about how difficult the result is to interpret. A PSA result can be normal and you can still have prostate cancer, or it can be abnormal but you don’t have prostate cancer. A positive test, however, does usually mean you need further investigations, and these can be uncomfortable and carry risks. Let’s talk you through what makes a good screening test, and how this can be applied to PSA screening.

Moving away from home is always a big step, full of celebration and excitement, but also some anxiety and feeling a bit overwhelmed. One of the boring jobs that should be on the list once that first week is out of the way is thinking about getting registered with a local doctor. Fingers crossed you won’t need to see your doctor, but if you do then it’s good to know where you can go. Your doctor can be your route to hospital specialists, your travel and vaccination expert, or even just a reassuring person to talk to if things are difficult. Here the Healthwords medical team goes into a bit more detail about how to look after your health when arriving at the university.

A colonoscopy is a procedure using a camera to check the inside of your bowel, with the aim of looking for any signs that are causing your symptoms or as part of a regular colorectal cancer screening. A colonoscope is a thin, flexible tube, the size of a pen, that is passed into your rectum. It has a camera on the end to view different parts of your bowels and may take some photos for future reference. It's usually done in an outpatient clinic by a gastroenterologist or colorectal surgeon. In order to get a good view, it's essential your bowel is cleared out beforehand, and they may blow a little gas in to see the bowel lining fully. It just views the rectum and large bowel (the colon), not the small bowel (intestines).

Blood tests have many different uses. They can help diagnose a condition, monitor a particular organ in the body such as the kidney or liver, and they can also be used to give measurements of bodily processes such as blood sugar or current levels of inflammation.

CT stands for computed tomography and it is a way of scanning that uses multiple X-rays to create accurate 3D images of the inside of your body. X-rays send small amounts of radiation energy through the body and detect the amount that has passed through to the other side. Different tissues block or absorb different amounts of the X-rays depending on how dense they are. The more dense the matter, the more radiation it will block and so the whiter it appears on the image. So, for example bone shows up as bright white as it blocks a large amount of the radiation, whereas air, in the lungs, allows more to pass through and shows up as much darker.

DEXA is short for 'dual energy X-ray absorptiometry' which is the medical term for a type of scan that uses mild X-rays to measure how dense bone is. The density of bone helps determine how strong the bone is, so the lower the density, the weaker the bone is considered to be. A DEXA scan can be used to diagnose conditions such as osteopenia and osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is when your bone density is significantly lower than the normal range for your age and gender, and the bones are therefore at a higher risk of breaking easily. Osteopenia is a milder form of this with just a slightly lower than normal bone density.

In medicine, we describe a condition as a diagnosis of exclusion when there’s no definitive test to prove it exists or that a particular person has it. Instead, we diagnose it as a collection of particular symptoms, while we’ve done tests to rule out other conditions that can cause a similar presentation. Irritable bowel syndrome is a good example – gut symptoms are very real to patients, but (as yet) we have no specific test. Instead, we rule out Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and celiac disease, which also cause gut symptoms. It’s also useful for conditions such as Alzheimer’s, where the clinical suspicion fits with what we know of the disease. A test is available, but it’s so invasive – requiring a sample of brain tissue – that it’s not an acceptable risk. So, we rule out other causes for memory loss, such as an infection or an electrolyte problem, and then diagnose Alzheimer’s based on the symptoms.

Diastix test strips detect sugar (glucose) levels in your urine. They are for people with diabetes or pre-diabetes. Diabetes is associated with uncontrolled high blood glucose levels. This occurs when either you're not producing enough of a hormone called insulin (type 1 diabetes) or your insulin is not working properly (type 2 diabetes). In healthy individuals, glucose is usually not found in the urine. As people with diabetes have high blood glucose levels, their kidneys can't filter all the glucose out of their urine. As a result, Diastix can help indicate your glucose levels. It is an alternative if you do not like testing your blood. Self-monitoring of glucose is mainly for people with type 1 diabetes. However, sometimes it can be beneficial for type 2 diabetes. Diastix is available over the counter and by prescription.

ECG is an electrocardiogram test to check the heart's electrical signals. Stickers are stuck to your chest, arms, and legs, which detect electrical signals the heart produces with each beat. The stickers transmit information to a device that produces a graph of the signals.