Preventive Screening

Here are benefits of Preventive Screening

Hi I’m doctor Asthta Dayal and I’m a consultant gynecologist. And I practice in Gurgaon. I have completed my graduation and post-graduation from Maulana Azad Medical College and I have done my MRCOG from London. I have practiced in hospitals like MediCity and Artemis and now I’m privately practicing in Gurgaon so I would like to discuss about preventive screening. Unfortunately preventive screening is something that is highly ignored by women in India and in fact the only time when a woman visits the gynecologist is when she’s actually pregnant now the kind of diseases that we’re having these days like PCOD, thyroid cancers. It is very important that we detect them at an early stage and treat them and unfortunately they don’t produce any symptoms still at very late stage. So that is why a preventive screening is the need of the hour.

So all women should get an annual preventive health check from a gynecologist. Now what happens in the gynea-check that when you count all the gynecologist, we first take your history in which try illicit factors which will put out a higher-than-usual risk of getting a certain disease like PCOD or cancer if you have a family history and then we go on to an examination which includes a breast examination. You can actually learn the examination from your gynecologist which you should be doing yourself once every month and now. This is important because breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in cities in India and India we have a 50-percent of vitality of breast cancer and main reason for this is because it is detected a very late stage.

So this besides the self-examination we mentioned also go for mammography once every other year, once there is about the age of 40. Besides this we also do an abdominal examination and an internal gynea examination. Now an internal check is something which women really are apprehensive about and that’s the reason they don’t want to visit a gynecologist but believe me it’s not painful. At the most it is a little uncomfortable or a little weird and it does not even take a minute during the internal check. We take you for any infection, sexually transmitted diseases, any cervical polyps and any conditions of the uterus like a fibroid or ovarian cyst and you can also take a pap tests at the same time. Now what is a pap smear? Pap Smear is a test which in which we just take cells from the mouth of the uterus, which is the cervix and we send it for testing. It is a screening test for cervical cancer which actually detects the cancer 15 years before the cancer develops.

Now cervical cancer is the second most important cancer in women in India. In fact, one woman is dying every eight minutes because of cervical cancer in India and this is such a distressing statistic because this cancer is highly preventable and treatable in fact there is a vaccine for cervical cancer. Vaccine which can be given to women in the age group of 19 to 27 and this actually prevents the occurrence of cancer. It is given routinely in US and UK in schools but in India we are highly unaware about it. So it is a good practice to get your routine screening for the PAP smear once every three years and an ultrasound annually to detect problems like PCOD and thyroid and other fibroids and so I would highly recommend that women do get an annual health check. And because the health of the woman and reflect only health the family.

So in case you want to get in touch with me you can do that through the Lybrate through a chat or a call or you would consult me in my clinic in Gurgaon.