What I've seen in recent years is that the new crop of GPs pretty much ignore labs. Family members have Kaiser who haven't had a CBC or Comprehensive Metabolic Panel in over 10 years of going in regularly for their annual check up. It's all about flu vaccine, mammogram, and now COVID vaccine. When they have had elevated or low labs, t…
What I've seen in recent years is that the new crop of GPs pretty much ignore labs. Family members have Kaiser who haven't had a CBC or Comprehensive Metabolic Panel in over 10 years of going in regularly for their annual check up. It's all about flu vaccine, mammogram, and now COVID vaccine. When they have had elevated or low labs, they dismiss it as irrelevant or NBD. Most recently, family member went in with acute abdominal swelling, fatigue, abdominal pain, nausea. She had done labs through LabCorp due to time it would take to get an MD appt. Platelets were over 600 along with elevated neutrophils. GP dismissed it as a flu or stomach bug. Turns out it was ovarian cancer. Elevated platelets and neutrophils should have immediately been a red flag for some sort of acute infection, inflammation, or cancer.
What I've seen in recent years is that the new crop of GPs pretty much ignore labs. Family members have Kaiser who haven't had a CBC or Comprehensive Metabolic Panel in over 10 years of going in regularly for their annual check up. It's all about flu vaccine, mammogram, and now COVID vaccine. When they have had elevated or low labs, they dismiss it as irrelevant or NBD. Most recently, family member went in with acute abdominal swelling, fatigue, abdominal pain, nausea. She had done labs through LabCorp due to time it would take to get an MD appt. Platelets were over 600 along with elevated neutrophils. GP dismissed it as a flu or stomach bug. Turns out it was ovarian cancer. Elevated platelets and neutrophils should have immediately been a red flag for some sort of acute infection, inflammation, or cancer.