What is the difference and connection between preventive care and physical examination

To put it simply, physical examination is the most basic pre-screening link in the preventive health care system, while preventive health care is a dynamic health maintenance project covering the entire life cycle. The two are partially and holistically related and cannot be completely equated or viewed in isolation.

I met retired Aunt Zhang at a community free clinic a while ago. She took last year’s work physical examination report and said that she had done health care every year and there must be nothing wrong with her body. But when she turned to the blood sugar item in the report, she found that her fasting blood sugar had reached 6.1mmol/L. At that time, she felt that the diagnostic criteria for diabetes were not met, so she turned around and stuffed the report into a drawer. She had not controlled her sugar for more than half a year. Recently, she always felt dry mouth and weak when checking. She had already developed into abnormal glucose tolerance, and would have been diagnosed with diabetes if it were two steps later.

Many people, like Aunt Zhang, equate physical examination with preventive health care. In fact, the core logic of the two is quite different. The essence of a physical examination is a "phased snapshot" of your physical condition, which only reflects your indicators during the period of examination. Most of the items are standardized. Whether you are an Internet practitioner who stays up late all year round, or a middle-aged and elderly person with a family history of hypertension, the examination items in the basic package are pretty much the same. The core function is to "screen for abnormalities". To put it bluntly, it tells you "what may be wrong with your body now."

If health maintenance is compared to maintaining a family car, a physical examination is an annual vehicle inspection to check whether there are bulges in the tires, whether the brakes are working, and whether the oil needs to be changed. Preventive care is a full-process maintenance plan that follows you from the first day you buy the car. : Knowing that you often run on mountain roads, it will remind you to change wear-resistant tires in advance. If it is found that the brakes are a little worn, it will set the time for the next review. It will also tell you how to drive to reduce the loss of parts. It can even give you suggestions on which type of glass water is more suitable. It is completely dynamically adjusted according to your individual situation. The core thing to solve is "how to prevent the problem from getting worse, and how to prevent problems that have not yet appeared from coming to your door."

There are always different voices in the industry. Some people think that many early problems cannot be detected in routine physical examinations, which is a waste of money. Others think that a full physical examination is equivalent to buying health insurance, and there is no need to worry about anything later. In essence, the relationship between the two is severed. Without precise indicators from physical examinations, preventive care is aimless. You can’t directly prescribe an intervention plan for osteoporosis to a 20-year-old boy who exercises all year round, right? On the other hand, if you just throw away the report after the physical examination and ignore the abnormal prompts above, then the significance of the physical examination will be basically zero.

The post-examination closed-loop service launched by our community health station in the past two years is designed to tie the two together. Last month, a young man who worked in Internet operations came for a physical examination and was found to have high uric acid and moderate fatty liver. We directly set up his health file, sent him a low-purine diet list, made an appointment for online health Q&A every Wednesday night, and reminded him not to always drink cold beer and supper. This week he came for a re-examination, and the uric acid has dropped by more than 40%, and the fatty liver has become mild.

To put it bluntly, physical examination is the first step to "clear mines" in health, and preventive health care is the entire process of removing minefields later on, or even preventing them from being buried in the first place. Only by working together can we really take health into our own hands.