How to understand or interpret Laboratory Tests

What is Laboratory Tests or Investigations?

Laboratory tests or investigations are medical tools to determine the health conditions or for the diagnosis of a disease or as a normal check by taking the samples of blood, urine, body fluids, tissues or by using radiological methods like X RAY, CT Etc. These type of tests are now become a common incident in every persons life, hence understanding the basics of these test are necessary not to avoid professional health advice but for basic understanding and also to avoid unwanted expenses and worries.

Why physicians are prescribing laboratory investigations? What are the uses?

• To diagnose or to rule out some diseases.
• As a normal health checkup to prevent any diseases and to understand general body health.
• To monitor a disease.
• To know the progress of ongoing treatment or to plan a treatment.

What are common laboratory investigation tests?

Different types of laboratory investigation tests are there,

Laboratory tests like 

• Blood tests
• Urine tests
• Tumor marker test
• Hormonal test
• Cultures, etc

Radiology and other investigations like

• X Ray
• MRI
• CT
• ECG
• Ultrasound etc

How we can read understand laboratory investigations?

Laboratory tests result are interpreted on the basis of normal and abnormal values and also by considering the signs and symptoms of the patient and conditions. Some lab tets are accurate which clearly indicate the conditions is yes or No. Some tests show suspecting conditions are within the range or not , some shows absent or present. Some tests shows false positive and negative or sometime some slight variations also will be there depending upon the test materials used. Usage of medications, age, gender etc also affect lab test results. Hence all the lab reports must be evaluated by considering the conditions of the patient signs and symptoms clinical examination findings.