Medical Tests & Procedures Archive

The once-a-year appointment can reveal vital health information for both you and your doctor.

It's usually covered by your health insurance, it doesn't take much time, and it's a great way to learn about your present and future health.

While men often call it the yearly physical, the annual ritual is better named a wellness visit or preventive health appointment. Whatever you call it, men should still have one every year as it remains an important part of primary care, according to Dr. Asaf Bitton, executive director of Ariadne Labs and primary care physician at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Here is what men need to know to minimize discomfort of a prostate biopsy and get the best results.

What is the test?

People who have leg pain when exercising may need an evaluation to make sure they have normal blood flow through their leg arteries. Normally blood pressure is similar whether it is measured in the legs or in the arms. If blood pressure is lower in the legs, it usually means that cholesterol buildup inside the leg arteries is interfering with circulation. By taking accurate blood pressure measurements at different locations along your legs, your doctors can determine if you have any arterial narrowing and, if so, where.

In order to get accurate blood pressure measurements, your doctor uses a technique called Doppler ultrasound. Doppler ultrasound is a painless way to detect blood flowing through a small artery. It uses sound waves and a type of sonar detection system to make noise when blood flow is detected. For arterial studies of the legs (called segmental Doppler pressures), Doppler ultrasound is used in place of the stethoscope that doctors usually use when taking blood pressures.

What is the test?

Ultrasound uses sound waves instead of radiation to generate snapshots or moving pictures of structures inside the body. This imaging technique works in a manner similar to radar and sonar. Ultrasound was developed in World War II to detect airplanes, missiles, and submarines that were otherwise invisible.

The doctor or ultrasound technician first coats a small area of your skin with a lubricant to reduce friction. He or she then places an ultrasound transducer, which looks like a microphone, on your skin and may rub it back and forth to get the right view. The transducer sends sound waves into your body and picks up the echoes of the sound waves as they bounce off internal organs and tissue. A computer transforms these echoes into an image that is displayed on a monitor.

What Is It?

Cardiac catheterization is a procedure in which a heart specialist inserts a small tube (catheter) through a large blood vessel in the arm or leg, and then passes the tube into the heart. Once inside the heart, doctors use the catheter to evaluate how the heart is working by measuring pressure and oxygen levels within the heart's chambers. Through the catheter, doctors inject a special dye that provides an X-ray image of the heart's internal structure and blood flow patterns.

The procedure is often done to look for narrowed and blocked coronary arteries. The X-ray dye also is injected into each of the three largest coronary arteries. This is called coronary angiography.

What Is It?

Chemotherapy drugs kill cancer cells or prevent them from growing and dividing. Chemotherapy drugs are also called anti-cancer drugs.

Chemotherapy drugs can shrink or limit the size of cancerous tumors. They may also prevent cancer from spreading to other parts of the body.

What Is It?

Cholecystectomy is the surgical removal of the gallbladder, the small saclike organ located near the liver in the upper right side of the abdomen. It is attached to the main duct that carries bile from the liver into the intestine. Bile helps your body to break down and absorb fats. The gallbladder temporarily stores bile from the liver. When you eat, the gallbladder contracts, and squeezes extra bile into the intestine to aid digestion.

There are two ways to remove the gallbladder:

• Traditional surgery - The surgeon cuts open the abdomen and removes the gallbladder through an incision that is about 6 inches long. The abdomen is then stitched closed again.
• Laparoscopic surgery - The surgeon makes four small (less than an inch) incisions for a laparoscope and instruments. A laparoscope is a tube-like instrument with a camera for viewing, and with it the surgeon can to guide the surgical instruments to remove the gallbladder. The gallbladder is cut away from the liver and the bile duct and removed through one of the small incisions.

Over 90% of the time, laparoscopic surgery is used because it requires a shorter hospital stay, is less painful, and has a shorter recovery time compared to traditional surgery. Traditional surgery is usually used because the person has significant abdominal scarring from prior surgery, severe inflammation, unusual anatomy, or other factors that make surgery with a laparoscope very difficult and riskier.

What Is It?

The cornea is the clear, round, "window" of tissue that allows light to enter the front of the eye. If the cornea becomes severely diseased or damaged, it can distort or even block the normal path of light into the eye. When this happens, light does not focus normally on the retina, the layer at the back of the eye that is responsible for sight. As a result, there can be a significant loss of vision in the affected eye.

When corneal conditions cause serious, irreversible vision problems, a corneal transplant often is the best solution. In a corneal transplant, an eye surgeon first removes the diseased or damaged area of cornea. The removed tissue then is replaced by a section of healthy cornea that has been taken from the eye of a dead donor.

What Is It?

Cystoscopy is a procedure that allows doctors to look inside the bladder and the urethra, the tube that carries urine from the bladder. A cystoscope is a tube-like instrument with lenses, a camera and a light on one end and an eyepiece on the other. With a cystoscope, your doctor can examine the urethra and the lining of the bladder. If necessary, your doctor can pass surgical instruments through the cystoscope to perform specific procedures. In most cases, a simple cystoscopy lasts 5 to 10 minutes. Procedures that are more complex take longer.

What It's Used For

Cystoscopy checks inside the bladder for tumors, sites of bleeding, signs of infection, stones (calculi) and causes of bladder outlet obstruction. It also can be used to:

An electroencephalogram (EEG) is a recording of the brain's electrical activity. Metal electrodes attached to the skin on the outside of the head transform electrical activity into patterns, commonly called brain waves. A polygraph machine records the brain waves. In some cases, the waves are transmitted to a computer screen. A basic EEG takes about 45 minutes, with a range of 30 minutes to 90 minutes.

Lightweight EEG devices allow people to walk around and perform normal daily activities while the devices detect and record brain waves over longer periods of time.