Blood test lottery

[Ironnotirony]

Imagine if once a month, a GP or PA spent a day going through blood tests from patients selected at random and acknowledged all the abnormal results and were allowed to put those patients on the right treatment paths.

This really isn’t as clever a post as you think it is.

I’ve never had any problems with not having the right treatment for any abnormal test results I have.

Well, for one, not all abnormal results require treatment. I was in hospital the other day and I have high inflammatory markers. They are abnormal, but I have cancer. I’m receiving treatment. The treatment can make them high. Nothing we need to do other than watch and wait.

Any time I’ve ever had anything unusual pop up, I get a copy of the results, I research what it means (it doesn’t always mean much of anything, sometimes things are outside of range and that’s fine 🤷🏻‍♀️), and I advocate for follow up when it needs it. That’s never not worked.

But some people do have health anxiety and a tendency to waste NHS time and resources because their ALT is 37 instead of 35 and no, GPs shouldn’t be playing into that anxiety.

The post wasn’t meant to be clever. It’s more desperate.
@mindutopiaI’m glad you’ve not had problems and hope your treatment goes well.

@mindutopia So you're saying you have to be on the ball then? You have to research your results and tell the doctors which ones you're concerned about and push for follow up. Not all patients have the ability or capacity to do that, which is why I agree with OP that GP surgeries should take more notice of abnormal results.

you'd probably end up treating more patients than you'd imagine for 'problems' that aren't the problem you think they are. Some of the population genuinely lie outside the normal ranges with no issues at all and you cannot tell who's who from just looking at the blood results. Some 'abnormal' results are not abnormal at all in the context of a patient's overall health. Quite often the 'right treatment path' is 'no treatment needed'. Context is everything and you don't get the context from just flicking through results randomly. The norm is that the person who requests the test is the one who's responsible for actioning anything that needs action.