5 ms·

How is that helpful? I guess for making a disability claim?

EdwardDiego 3y ago
For comparing current results to historical to look for anomalous changes.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> How is that helpful? It helps eliminate benign anomalous results in emergencies. I have a low neutrophil count. It is totally uneventful. Having that baseline means if I’m sick and have the works run, doctors need not start treating my neutropenia—that wasn’t caused by whatever is going on. More broadly, catching a vitamin D deficiency and allergy early probably saved some years of life and definitely improved my quality of life. Some doctors are test happy. Most are not. Finding the right fit is part of being a human in the midst of modern healthcare.
- rolisz 3y ago
  Was your vitamin D deficiency and allergy related to long COVID?
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Was your vitamin D deficiency and allergy related to long COVID Nope. Indoor lifestyle and and a proclivity for cold weather. And, like, allergies.
  - SecretDreams 3y ago
    The person that you responded to was not the one who made the covid claim. I think it was a bit jarring to have that comment on the covid chain since their experiences are not related.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > Some doctors are test happy. Most are not. In my family we detected lung cancer in stage 2b instead of stage 1 because we spent months fighting a doctor that didn't want to do tests. If we 'listened to the experts' my family member would be dead.
  - copperx 3y ago
    Were there symptoms in stage 1?
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      Yes, thats why we went to see the docyor in the first place. Instead our concerns were dismissed
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
usrusr 3y ago
Most medical diagnosis goes like this: you see a symptom, this could be caused by a dozen entirely different problems. A few of them can be easily ticked off by absence of some very clear flags in the lab result list. Others only have indicators that are much less clear, that are shared with a whole bunch of other outside-the-norm conditions, many of them perfectly fine. If you have a backlog, if instead of a list of current measurements you have a matrix of current and previous measurements, you can narrow it down much more.
- haldujai 3y ago
  Not really, very few diagnoses benefit from such historical data. Any lab value flagged as abnormal is typically >95%ile meriting some form of further investigation (whether that’s continued follow up/repeat blood work or a different test depends on what we’re talking about). The tests that could be physiologic for a patient outside of reference ranges (e.g. mild LFT elevations) will often just get repeated to establish stability as you propose. There isn’t a compelling argument to do this prospectively before symptoms start.
LorenPechtel 3y ago
My wife's hemoglobin comes back high. It always comes back high. That's just her, it doesn't mean something's gone wrong. Some out-of-range values are meaningful (like cholesterol) by themselves, but in many cases if they're out of range but the patient is healthy it's simply something to note as normal for that patient.

For comparing current results to historical to look for anomalous changes.

> How is that helpful? It helps eliminate benign anomalous results in emergencies. I have a low neutrophil count. It is totally uneventful. Having that baseline means if I’m sick and have the works run, doctors need not start treating my neutropenia—that wasn’t caused by whatever is going on. More broadly, catching a vitamin D deficiency and allergy early probably saved some years of life and definitely improved my quality of life. Some doctors are test happy. Most are not. Finding the right fit is part of being a human in the midst of modern healthcare.

rolisz 3y ago
Was your vitamin D deficiency and allergy related to long COVID?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Was your vitamin D deficiency and allergy related to long COVID Nope. Indoor lifestyle and and a proclivity for cold weather. And, like, allergies.
- SecretDreams 3y ago
  The person that you responded to was not the one who made the covid claim. I think it was a bit jarring to have that comment on the covid chain since their experiences are not related.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> Some doctors are test happy. Most are not. In my family we detected lung cancer in stage 2b instead of stage 1 because we spent months fighting a doctor that didn't want to do tests. If we 'listened to the experts' my family member would be dead.
- copperx 3y ago
  Were there symptoms in stage 1?
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    Yes, thats why we went to see the docyor in the first place. Instead our concerns were dismissed
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

usrusr 3y ago

Most medical diagnosis goes like this: you see a symptom, this could be caused by a dozen entirely different problems. A few of them can be easily ticked off by absence of some very clear flags in the lab result list. Others only have indicators that are much less clear, that are shared with a whole bunch of other outside-the-norm conditions, many of them perfectly fine. If you have a backlog, if instead of a list of current measurements you have a matrix of current and previous measurements, you can narrow it down much more.

haldujai 3y ago
Not really, very few diagnoses benefit from such historical data. Any lab value flagged as abnormal is typically >95%ile meriting some form of further investigation (whether that’s continued follow up/repeat blood work or a different test depends on what we’re talking about). The tests that could be physiologic for a patient outside of reference ranges (e.g. mild LFT elevations) will often just get repeated to establish stability as you propose. There isn’t a compelling argument to do this prospectively before symptoms start.

LorenPechtel 3y ago

My wife's hemoglobin comes back high. It always comes back high. That's just her, it doesn't mean something's gone wrong. Some out-of-range values are meaningful (like cholesterol) by themselves, but in many cases if they're out of range but the patient is healthy it's simply something to note as normal for that patient.