blood tests before anaesthesia

lola_run

I need to ask my parents to get a full blood test to check for any evidence of illnesses, as I will shortly be undergoing anaesthesia. Will most doctors understand what a 'full blood test' is or should I spell out what things needed to be tested? I'd like to hear from anyone who has undergone same procedure.

DrIndy

don't stress. Doctors know exactly what to check for. The key issues are to check the blood count for haemoglobin to make sure you are not anaemic, the coagulation to make sure you won't bleed excessively, kidney function and electrolytes to make sure anaesthesia is safe.

They may add other tests depending on medical background (if any) or if there is a specific need (such as liver enzymes if you have a liver problem).

Don't stress, you'll be fine!

Tree

lola_run wrote:

I need to ask my parents to get a full blood test to check for any evidence of illnesses, as I will shortly be undergoing anaesthesia. Will most doctors understand what a 'full blood test' is or should I spell out what things needed to be tested? I'd like to hear from anyone who has undergone same procedure.

In my experience, doctors generally request more tests than they probably need, not less.

Learn to trust medical professionals, they go through a hell of a lot of learning to keep ppl healthy. Stop doubting them.

eth0_

Why do they need to test your parents' blood...?

lola_run

eth0_ wrote:

Why do they need to test your parents' blood...?

To see if any diseases run in my family.

lola_run

DrIndy wrote:

don't stress. Doctors know exactly what to check for. The key issues are to check the blood count for haemoglobin to make sure you are not anaemic, the coagulation to make sure you won't bleed excessively, kidney function and electrolytes to make sure anaesthesia is safe.

They may add other tests depending on medical background (if any) or if there is a specific need (such as liver enzymes if you have a liver problem).

Don't stress, you'll be fine!

I'm not stressing and it's not that I don't trust medical professionals. I'm just a person who likes to be just as informed as the doctors... perhaps I should consider a change of career. ;-)

eth0_

lola_run wrote:

To see if any diseases run in my family.

You know you can ask your doctor why they are doing x, y and z at the time, they'll be happy to explain.

They want to find out if your parents are suffering undiagnosed illness before operating on you?

Must be a pretty serious op then. Good luck with it.

lola_run

eth0_ wrote:

You know you can ask your doctor why they are doing x, y and z at the time, they'll be happy to explain.

They want to find out if your parents are suffering undiagnosed illness before operating on you?

Must be a pretty serious op then. Good luck with it.

It's not an operation, just some tests. I was told that the anaesthesiest will ned to know as much information as possible.

Traumadoc

This sounds very odd - I cannot see why they would need to test your parents. I have never heard of this.

eth0_

lola_run wrote:

It's not an operation, just some tests. I was told that the anaesthesiest will ned to know as much information as possible.

What kind of test is it, as a matter of interest? It all sounds very unusual :-O

Tree

i think lola_run has simply decided she should get her parents tested. I doubt the anaethetist would have suggested it. usually they'd ask about any history of family illnesses.

lola_run

Tree wrote:

i think lola_run has simply decided she should get her parents tested. I doubt the anaethetist would have suggested it. usually they'd ask about any history of family illnesses.

In fact, I was requested by my gastroenterologist to do so, in order to be detect if there is a prevalence of any stomach disorders in my family. I don't want to divulge all the details here. I just basically want to know if it is standard procedure in Ireland for doctors to issue the full results of the blood tests to patients (my parent's GP is refusing to do so for some reason or other). Does anyone here receive the print out of their results or is this concept alien ?

(btw it is common practice on continental europe to get the results printed out and EXPLAINED to you in layman's language... just to make my position clearer).

Thanks for any helpful advice on this.

Traumadoc

This is a bit strange, You need blood results of your parents for a your anaesthetist or gastroenterologist??

Tree

i've only ever received one print out of a blood test and this was an IgE i requested myself. The GP can't give you your parents results, you're a third party, it's against the law for him to divulge this information to you.

if your gastroenterologist wants your parents results, then he will have to go to their gp himself and request them with good reason.

tbh the only gastro conditions i can think of off hand that can be diagnosed from unknown using a bloodtest are the autoimmune style ones.

lola_run

Tree wrote:

i've only ever received one print out of a blood test and this was an IgE i requested myself. The GP can't give you your parents results, you're a third party, it's against the law for him to divulge this information to you.

if your gastroenterologist wants your parents results, then he will have to go to their gp himself and request them with good reason.

tbh the only gastro conditions i can think of off hand that can be diagnosed from unknown using a bloodtest are the autoimmune style ones.

Yes, in fact i will soon be tested for an autoimmune disease which is genetic in nature and it's necessary to look at whether my parents have a predisposition for this disease (of course, the results will be non-conclusive).

If they can't be given directly to me, then I guess they can be given to my parents, who can then give them to me. Is that legal?

I find it very strange that the blood test results are not issued to thos tested as standard procedure. Why is this, does anyone know? Now, I'm beginning to understand why my specialist rose his eyes to heaven when I mentioned the Irish health system...! lol

Tree

i'd assume results arent released in general because most ppl dont understand what they mean. and also the tendancy to run off and self diagnose when you're given a set of numbers you dont really understand can be quite dangerous.

lola_run

Tree wrote:

i'd assume results arent released in general because most ppl dont understand what they mean. and also the tendancy to run off and self diagnose when you're given a set of numbers you dont really understand can be quite dangerous.

LOL!!! Well a good doctor would sit you down and explain in lay terms what everything means. As for self diagnosis, that's not an issue as most drugs to treat things have to got on prescription i would have thought, so anything else would not be that harmful.

Tree

You dont need a prescriptoin for all drugs. Some ppl like to buy stuff on the internet. some ppl like to take herbal preparations for hte condition they believe themselves to have.

some ppl make themselves sick by believing themselves to be sick. self diagnosis is not the hypochondriac's friend.

eth0_

lola_run wrote:

LOL!!! Well a good doctor would sit you down and explain in lay terms what everything means. As for self diagnosis, that's not an issue as most drugs to treat things have to got on prescription i would have thought, so anything else would not be that harmful.

If you ask for a print out of your blood test results, the GP will give it to you. Mine has no problem with printing out results, scans etc, she knows I have an interest in medicine and usually explains things in more detail than she would with other patients. As for the results for your parents, your doctor could request these from their GP with their permission.

You have to remember GP's - and especially hospital doctors - are very pressed for time and often only have 10-15 mins to spend with each patient. They don't have time to explain everything, or the resources to print out every scrap of info for you.

lola_run

eth0_ wrote:

If you ask for a print out of your blood test results, the GP will give it to you. Mine has no problem with printing out results, scans etc, she knows I have an interest in medicine and usually explains things in more detail than she would with other patients. As for the results for your parents, your doctor could request these from their GP with their permission.

You have to remember GP's - and especially hospital doctors - are very pressed for time and often only have 10-15 mins to spend with each patient. They don't have time to explain everything, or the resources to print out every scrap of info for you.

Yes, I know - the resources just aren't there, that's the problem it seems. Well, if the Irish pay such low rates of health insurance, it's clear that they're not going to get the same service from the medical service, as let's say a French person who contributes up to three times more.

But if doctors were to take more time to explain things to patients, it would benefit them in the long run. From what my parents have been saying, all they are told is whether they have high cholesterol or not, basically anything potentially life threatening (lol). However, there's so many diseases that can be prevented if blood tests are analysed appropriately and the appropriate treatment given to prevent (for example, abnormally high iron levels lead to heart attacks)... anyway, that's for another thread.

Having said that most doctors I know in Ireland are certainly not poor (big houses, big cars), so perhaps a change of philosophy is also called for. Putting patients' interests instead of their own.

eth0_

You clearly know very little about medicine in this country Lola. Doctors are not on minimum wage but they're not 'rich' by any stretch of the imagination, at least not until they reach consultant rank. I have friends who are doctors who regularly go months without pay when they change to a new hospital. The money doctors earn is in line with the toughness of the job, the long hours and the huge malpractice insurance all doctors must have. I read somewhere that if you take the 90 hour weeks junior doctors do, and divide their monthly salary by those hours, they aren't on much more than minimum wage. Registrars earn more but still work long and unsocial hours.

If there was any *NEED* for your doctor to ask about family history, they would ask. I find it shocking that you seem to think you know better than someone who is a qualified doctor.

If you really think you need every test under the sun done, why don't you go to Charter medical in Smithfield and get their battery of tests, MRI scans, bone density scans etc done? Because you're asking way too much of the primary care system in any country, never mind Ireland.

http://www.chartermedical.ie/

DrIndy

Now now - no doctor bashing please. It irritates me to no end, I drive a crappy wee car and have barely enough money left over to go out at the weekends and take the occasional holiday.

Blood tests are numbers on paper - many people have mildly deranged results in an ordinarily well person and so are irrelevant.

Blood tests complement a doctors clinical judgement of a situation and very few diseases can be diagnosed on the results alone (high cholesterol being one of the few examples) - only in taking them in context. If I were to break down a blood test for every patient, I would probably just scare them (Your kidneys aren't 100%, you're calcium is a little low, your liver is a little off and you're a touch anaemic). Instead if the patient is fine, you just monitor them and recheck in a years time to make sure they are not getting worse.

I all depends on the context and what other things are going on with them.

lola_run

eth0_ wrote:

You clearly know very little about medicine in this country Lola. Doctors are not on minimum wage but they're not 'rich' by any stretch of the imagination, at least not until they reach consultant rank. I have friends who are doctors who regularly go months without pay when they change to a new hospital. The money doctors earn is in line with the toughness of the job, the long hours and the huge malpractice insurance all doctors must have. I read somewhere that if you take the 90 hour weeks junior doctors do, and divide their monthly salary by those hours, they aren't on much more than minimum wage. Registrars earn more but still work long and unsocial hours.

If there was any *NEED* for your doctor to ask about family history, they would ask. I find it shocking that you seem to think you know better than someone who is a qualified doctor.

If you really think you need every test under the sun done, why don't you go to Charter medical in Smithfield and get their battery of tests, MRI scans, bone density scans etc done? Because you're asking way too much of the primary care system in any country, never mind Ireland.

http://www.chartermedical.ie/

Mmm.... I personally know some doctors, and believe me they earn quite decent salaries.

For the last time, yes, my specialist and the anaestheseist DO NEED to know about family history for the tests I'm getting done.

No, I never said I needed every test under the sun done, stop exaggerating. What I am asking for is just standard procedure in the country where I'm getting the tests done!!! The problem is with the backward sytem here (GPs who won't give patients blood results because 'god only knows'). Unfortunately, my parents still live here, so I have to deal with all this.

lola_run

DrIndy wrote:

Now now - no doctor bashing please. It irritates me to no end, I drive a crappy wee car and have barely enough money left over to go out at the weekends and take the occasional holiday.

Blood tests are numbers on paper - many people have mildly deranged results in an ordinarily well person and so are irrelevant.

Blood tests complement a doctors clinical judgement of a situation and very few diseases can be diagnosed on the results alone (high cholesterol being one of the few examples) - only in taking them in context. If I were to break down a blood test for every patient, I would probably just scare them (Your kidneys aren't 100%, you're calcium is a little low, your liver is a little off and you're a touch anaemic). Instead if the patient is fine, you just monitor them and recheck in a years time to make sure they are not getting worse.

I all depends on the context and what other things are going on with them.

Well, fortunately you're not my doctor! My doctor goes through everything in detail.

eth0_

lola_run wrote:

Well, fortunately you're not my doctor! My doctor goes through everything in detail.

Fortunately for DrIndy he's not your doctor, I would say!
Lola you're really offending a lot of people on this forum with your bad attitude toward Irish medicine. If it's that bad why don't you deal exclusively in private doctors or have all your treatment in Germany?

Dr Galen

lola_run there was a period of time there that you were getting a hard time from other members and I thought that maybe they were being harsh on you. But from reading most of your recent posts i'm changing my mind.

It really does seem that from the tone and content of most of your posts your either taking the p1ss or setting out purposefully to troll or somesuch. you seem to be trying to stir things up by creating nonsense posts or asking for advice/input and then basically throwing anything that anyone says back at them.

What would be really cool is if you would either
a) stop taking the p1ss and act normally
or
b) don't bother posting anymore if your intention is just to rise things

lola_run

eth0_ wrote:

Fortunately for DrIndy he's not your doctor, I would say!
Lola you're really offending a lot of people on this forum with your bad attitude toward Irish medicine. If it's that bad why don't you deal exclusively in private doctors or have all your treatment in Germany?

I personally do have all my treatment done elsewhere, but in this case I need to deal with the Irish system for the reasons explained above.

PS: I'm not alone in my bad attitude towards Irish medicine, I have personally known people here in Ireland who have died because of bad doctors/errors by specialists. I can't remember the amount of times I was wrongly diagnosed by doctors here. The bad service is without a doubt partly down to a lack of resources... If people were prepared to pay higher social security contributions, we'd have a better service.

lola_run

nurse_baz wrote:

lola_run there was a period of time there that you were getting a hard time from other members and I thought that maybe they were being harsh on you. But from reading most of your recent posts i'm changing my mind.

It really does seem that from the tone and content of most of your posts your either taking the p1ss or setting out purposefully to troll or somesuch. you seem to be trying to stir things up by creating nonsense posts or asking for advice/input and then basically throwing anything that anyone says back at them.

What would be really cool is if you would either
a) stop taking the p1ss and act normally
or
b) don't bother posting anymore if your intention is just to rise things

:-) No, I didn't want to take the piss (don't know what trolling is), and No, I don't want to rise anything, just express my opinion. Surely, I'm entitled to do that or is that banned or something? :-)

Dr Galen

then it appears that you are just annoying in general. i will certainly bear that in mind from now on cheers

eth0_

lola_run wrote:

I personally do have all my treatment done elsewhere, but in this case I need to deal with the Irish system for the reasons explained above.

PS: I'm not alone in my bad attitude towards Irish medicine, I have personally known people here in Ireland who have died because of bad doctors/errors by specialists. I can't remember the amount of times I was wrongly diagnosed by doctors here. The bad service is without a doubt partly down to a lack of resources... If people were prepared to pay higher social security contributions, we'd have a better service.

How much tax are you paying on your text message job? If it's the same job a friend of mind does, it's nothing at all!!

The problem is not with how much social security we pay, god knows I pay enough, it's how the government allocate it that is the problem.

Free healthcare is for those who cannot afford it. If you have a job, get health insurance like the rest of us, and stop grumping because your overworked public doctor doesn't have the time to waste explaining the ins and outs of every test result, when there are people sicker than you who need his help.

Your attitude really disgusts me. People die in hospital all the time, in every country. It's rarely because of malpractice. Ireland has a pretty low rate of 'incidents' compared to the rest of the EU.

lola_run

eth0_ wrote:

How much tax are you paying on your text message job? If it's the same job a friend of mind does, it's nothing at all!!

The problem is not with how much social security we pay, god knows I pay enough, it's how the government allocate that is the problem.

Free healthcare is for those who cannot afford it. If you have a job, get health insurance like the rest of us, and stop grumping because your overworked public doctor doesn't have the time to waste explaining the ins and outs of every test result, when there are people sicker than you who need his help.

Your attitude really disgusts me. People die in hospital all the time, in every country. It's rarely because of malpractice. Ireland has a pretty low rate of 'incidents' compared to the rest of the EU.

Text message job? What are you talking about?

Yes, the problem is partly how much social security Irish citizens pay. Even if the government were to allocate it properly, there still wouldn't be enough to train/hire more specialists so waiting lists would be a thing of the past or pay doctors more so that they could spend more time with patients explaining the results of a blood test. Healthcare is an expensive business, I know.

You obviously have never compared Irish healthcare services with those of other EU countries. Out of interest what percentage of your income goes on healthcare? (public healthcare) I'm sure you'll agree that what you put in you get out.

It always makes me laugh when I hear Irish people complaining they pay too much for (public) healthcare. They should try living in a country like France for a while. They'd get a shock!

eth0_

I don't have a payslip to hand, but I pay the top rate of tax, so my PRSI is quite a lot. PRSI in germany is a ridiculous sum, overall nearly 50% of your wages are eaten up with tax and PRSI. You might have better hospitals, but I would not be happy paying that amount of tax.

Text messaging job - "I work over the Internet (I receive and send texts)"

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055060990

lola_run

eth0_ wrote:

I don't have a payslip to hand, but I pay the top rate of tax, so my PRSI is quite a lot. PRSI in germany is a ridiculous sum, overall nearly 50% of your wages are eaten up with tax and PRSI. You might have better hospitals, but I would not be happy paying that amount of tax.

Text messaging job - "I work over the Internet (I receive and send texts)"

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055060990

Nope, I don't receive and send text (messages), which is I think what you may have understood?? I actually receive documents that I have to edit or translate. I call these texts, and tend to call text messages SMS messages to avoid any confusion!

Well, not so sure about how much is taken in Germany, but like I said you generally pay for what you get from most public healthcare systems in Europe. Italy is probably one exception, however.

DrIndy

Alright this thread is going off the topic - I'm closing it.

Lola - please post with caution. I HATE to moderate threads and individual but will sternly if needed.

ceidefields

My experience with this kind of request is that the doctor needs to write out a prescription for exactly what kind of blood tests need to be done and then send it to your parents doctor(s). Then they'll send your parents to the lab to get the blood tests done and theh lab will send the results back to the doctors. Or they write a prescription directly to your parents and then they go to the lab to have the tests run (without their primary care doctor).

I don't think you could just walk into a lab and say I want a full blood workup because that could be misinterpreted, especially if they want to check for specific items.

HTH.