Cancer

Cancer Screening & Diagnosis

Cancer screening tests are tests that look for the existence of cancer in healthy people or people without signs of cancer. Cancer screening tests are intended to find cancers at an early stage when they are more treatable Cancer screening helps find cancer initial before you have symptoms when it is easier to treat. Cancer screening helps find cancer before it spreads when it is easier to treat. Early finding may mean less treatment and less time spent recovering. The earlier a cancer is noticed, the better your chance of survival. There are some cancers which can really be screened and identified by simple tests and they are cancers of the breast, cervix, colon, prostate, lung, skin and oral cancers.

Depending on where the cancer is located, a physical exam may give some idea as to how much cancer there is. Imaging tests like x-rays, CT scans, MRIs, ultrasound, and PET scans may also give information about how much and where cancer is in the body. Effective diagnostic testing is used to confirm or eliminate the presence of disease, monitor the disease process, and to plan for and evaluate the effectiveness of treatment. In some cases, it is necessary to repeat testing when a person's condition has changed, if a sample collected was not of good quality, or an abnormal test result needs to be confirmed