Diagnostics & Testing

You’ve fol­lowed your physi­cian’s rec­om­men­da­tion and had your year­ly screen­ing mam­mo­gram per­formed, but then you get called back for addi­tion­al imag­ing. Nat­u­ral­ly your ini­tial reac­tion caus­es your blood pres­sure to spike … this is a test that detects breast can­cer after all. How­ev­er, only 10% of women called back for more tests are found to have breast can­cer accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety. Learn more about call-backs and why it might not nec­es­sar­i­ly be cancer.

Your breasts are made up of glands, ducts and fibrous tis­sue, referred to col­lec­tive­ly as fibrog­lan­du­lar tis­sue, and fat­ty tis­sue, all wrapped in skin. Dur­ing a mam­mo­gram, your radi­ol­o­gist eval­u­ates the images to deter­mine the amount of dense ver­sus fat­ty tis­sue in your breasts.

Receiv­ing a can­cer diag­no­sis can be a life-chang­ing event and you may be over­whelmed with what to do next. A sec­ond opin­ion can pro­vide you with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of your diag­no­sis and treat­ment options. A fresh look at your health from anoth­er physi­cian may pro­vide a dif­fer­ent man­age­ment plan or reaf­firm that the plan pro­vid­ed is appropriate.

Exter­nal beam radi­a­tion ther­a­py, the most wide­ly used type of radi­a­tion ther­a­py, comes from a machine (lin­ear accel­er­a­tor) that aims radi­a­tion at the spe­cif­ic spot that is affect­ed with can­cer. The machine is large and may be noisy. It does not touch you, but rotates around you, send­ing radi­a­tion to your body from many directions.

Veins are blood ves­sels that car­ry blood back to the heart. To keep blood mov­ing toward the heart, veins have one way valves. When the valves break­down, blood does not flow well and can cause Chron­ic Venous Insuf­fi­cien­cy (CVI) and vari­cose veins. The abnor­mal flow of blood is typ­i­cal­ly referred to as ​‘reflux’ since the blood moves back­wards and for­wards. Venous reflux occurs most often in veins clos­est to the skin (super­fi­cial veins) and vari­cose veins can be blue, red, or flesh-col­ored. They typ­i­cal­ly look like cords under the skin and can be twist­ed or bulging. Spi­der veins are like vari­cose veins, but much small­er. The look like small tree branch­es on the sur­face of the skin.

Flu­o­roscopy, or flu­o­ro, is made up of ​“live” X‑ray images that when they are put togeth­er look like a movie. A flu­o­ro­scope allows med­ical staff to see bones and also helps physi­cians to iden­ti­fy soft tis­sue pathology.

Pul­monary func­tion tests (PFTs) are a series of non-inva­sive diag­nos­tic tests that mea­sure how well your lungs work and can be used to help diag­nose cer­tain lung dis­or­ders. ​‘Pul­monary func­tion tests’ is an inclu­sive term that refers to many dif­fer­ent pro­ce­dures that mea­sure how your lungs work in dif­fer­ent ways. Specif­i­cal­ly these tests mea­sure how well you are able to breathe and how well your lungs are able to sup­ply oxy­gen to your body by mea­sur­ing your lung vol­umes, capac­i­ties, rates of flow and gas exchange.

Radi­ol­o­gy imag­ing is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of health­care used as a tool in med­i­cine to show parts of the body. But have you ever won­dered why your physi­cian referred you for a CT scan instead of an MRI, or what Nuclear Med­i­cine is used for? If so, this info­graph­ic is an easy ref­er­ence chart that high­lights the dif­fer­ent types of diag­nos­tic imag­ing and what they’re used for.

Obe­si­ty is a chron­ic, neu­robe­hav­ioral dis­ease that affects over 30 per­cent of adults in the Unit­ed States today. You are con­sid­ered obese if your Body Mass Index (BMI) score, which com­pares your height to weight ratio, is 30 or high­er. Over­time, car­ry­ing excess weight increas­es your risk of devel­op­ing oth­er health con­di­tions like dia­betes, high blood pres­sure and sleep apnea.