Doctor Pictures
Dinah Lianes
Irakl Khvedaguridze, 81, is the only licensed doctor across 386 sq miles of mountainous region, serving a dwindling community of Tush people. During the summer and early autumn, he gets to his patients on his white horse, Bichola. When the snow gets too deep, Khvedaguridze converts his shoes into skis using birch planks nailed with wide canvas. Once the snow rises above his knees, he can only travel on foot
Only split a tablet if your pharmacist or doctor tells you to do it and explains how. They might have you split your pills to change the dose of your medication. Or they might recommend it to help you save money, since certain double-strength tablets cost about as much as lower-dose versions.
Capsule endoscopy is a noninvasive diagnostic procedure to visualize the inside of your digestive tract. You swallow a capsule that contains a tiny camera, a transmitter and a light. As it passes through your stomach, intestines, colon and rectum, the capsule takes thousands of pictures and transmits them to a recorder that you wear outside of your body.
Once the equipment is ready, a nurse will activate the capsule and give you a sip of water to help swallow it. The capsule is about the size of a large vitamin pill, and is coated to make it easy to swallow.
You can go home after you swallow the capsule and perform most of your daily activities while wearing the electrodes or belt. You will not feel the capsule as it moves through your digestive tract. Be sure to:
If capsule endoscopy leads to a diagnosis, your gastroenterologist will talk to you about the treatment options. Depending on the condition, more procedures such as a biopsy or a colonoscopy may be needed.
While the capsule is in your body, stay away from any source of powerful electromagnetic fields, such as an MRI. An electromagnetic field may erase the data from the capsule and cause internal injury.
There are groups of people for whom capsule endoscopy may pose other risks, or capsule use has not been studied sufficiently in these groups. If any of the following apply to you, your doctor may recommend modifying the capsule endoscopy procedure or using a different diagnostic test.
To help your doctor assess your health concern, snap photos and attach in your myChart message. The photos you send are secure and will only be viewed by your care team as part of your medical record.
Inside the myChart app on your smartphone or from the myChart webpage, when you create a Medical Advice message to your provider, you can attach up to 3 images. These can be attached from your camera album or you can capture from your smartphone camera as you compose the message.
Eye doctors strongly advise that patients get retinal photos taken as a part of their annual eye examination. These are photos of your optic nerve and retina, which can be used to diagnose a variety of diseases. Some of those conditions include diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration and glaucoma.
Glaucoma is a condition that occurs as the result of damage to the optic nerve. If it is left untreated, then it will lead to irreversible vision loss. Glaucoma is the top cause of blindness in African-Americans. Diabetes and other health problems can increase the risk of this condition. Additionally, people who have a family history of this condition are at a greater risk for developing it.
You should make sure that you ask your eye doctor about retinal photos during your next eye examination. Your eye doctor will also provide you with tips on things that you can do to keep your eyes healthy.
If you have a symptom or a screening test result that suggests cancer, your doctor will find out whether it is due to cancer or some other cause. There is no single test that can diagnose cancer. So your doctor may start by asking about your personal and family medical history and doing a physical exam. They may order lab tests, imaging tests (scans), or other tests or procedures. You may also need a biopsy, which is often the only way to tell for sure if you have cancer.
This page covers tests that are often used to help diagnose cancer. Depending on your symptoms, you may have other tests, too. To learn more about how specific cancers are diagnosed, see the PDQ cancer treatment summaries for adult and childhood cancers. These summaries include detailed information about and pictures of diagnostic tests and procedures for each specific type of cancer.
Results from lab tests, imaging, and biopsies are often posted in your patient portal before your doctor can discuss them with you. It is normal to feel anxious and want to know right away what the results are and what they mean. But your doctor is the best person to explain the results from all your tests and what they mean for you.
It is important to keep in mind that lab results for healthy people can vary from person to person. Reasons for these differences include age, sex, race, medical history, and general health. In fact, your own results can vary from day to day. Because normal results can bounce around a bit, they are often reported in a range, with lower and upper limits. These ranges are based on test results from large numbers of people who have been tested in the past.
What it does: A blood chemistry test measures the amounts of certain substances that are released into the blood by the organs and tissues of the body. These substances include metabolites, electrolytes, fats, sugars, and proteins, including enzymes.
What it tells us: Blood chemistry tests give important information about how well your kidneys, liver, and other organs are working. High or low levels of some substances in the blood can be a sign of disease or treatment side effects.
What it does: The CBC measures the number of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets in your blood. It also measures the amount of hemoglobin (the protein that carries oxygen) in your blood, the amount of your blood that is made up of red blood cells (hematocrit), the size of your red blood cells, and the amount of hemoglobin in your red blood cells.
How it is used: The CBC is often part of a routine health check-up. It can help diagnose some cancers, especially leukemias. It is also used to monitor your health during and after treatment.
What it does: Cytogenetic analysis looks for changes in chromosomes in samples of tissue, blood, bone marrow, or amniotic fluid. Chromosome changes may include broken, missing, rearranged, or extra chromosomes. Changes in certain chromosomes may be a sign of a genetic condition or some types of cancer.
What it does: Immunophenotyping uses antibodies to identify cells based on the types of antigens or markers on the surface of the cells. It is most often done on blood or bone marrow samples. But it may also be done on other body fluids or tissue samples.
How it is used: Immunophenotyping helps diagnose, stage, and monitor blood cancers and other blood disorders, such as leukemias, lymphomas, myelodysplastic syndromes, and myeloproliferative disorders.
How it is used: A liquid biopsy may help find cancer at an early stage. It may also be used to help plan treatment or to find out how well treatment is working or if cancer has come back.
What they do: Tests for tumor markers measure substances that are produced by cancer cells or other cells of the body in response to cancer. Most tumor markers are made by both normal cells and cancer cells. But they are produced at much higher levels by cancer cells.
How it is used: Urine cytology helps diagnose kidney cancer, bladder cancer, and rarer urothelial cancers. After cancer treatment, it is used to watch for signs that cancer has returned.
A CT scan uses an x-ray machine linked to a computer to take a series of pictures of your organs from different angles. These pictures are used to create detailed 3-D images of the inside of your body.
Sometimes, you may receive a dye or other contrast material before you have the scan. You might swallow the dye, or it may be given by a needle into a vein. Contrast material helps make the pictures easier to read by highlighting certain areas in the body.
An MRI uses a powerful magnet and radio waves to take pictures of your body in slices. These slices are combined to create detailed images of the inside of your body, which can show places where there may be tumors.
Bone scans are a type of nuclear scan that check for abnormal areas or damage in the bones. They may be used to diagnose bone cancer or find out whether cancer has spread to the bones from elsewhere in the body (called metastatic bone tumors).
A PET scan is a type of nuclear scan that makes detailed 3-D pictures of areas inside your body where glucose is taken up. Because cancer cells often take up more glucose than healthy cells, the pictures can be used to find cancer in the body.
An ultrasound exam uses high-energy sound waves that people cannot hear. The sound waves echo off tissues inside your body. A computer uses these echoes to create pictures of areas inside your body. This picture is called a sonogram.
During an ultrasound exam, you will lie on a table while a technologist slowly moves a device called a transducer, which makes the high-energy sound waves, on the skin over the part of the body that is being examined. The transducer is covered with a warm gel that helps it glide over the skin.
X-rays use low doses of radiation to create pictures inside your body. An x-ray technologist will put you in position and direct the x-ray beam to the correct part of your body. While the images are taken, you will need to stay very still and may need to hold your breath for a second or two.