diseases or disorders.
Screening is an essential step as it helps clinical officers in the diagnosis of diseases. It helps to identify the cause of specific symptoms that a patient has. It is also helpful in the early detection and diagnosis of a disease, and therefore, it can be treated early. Many screening tools are normally used as the most important being population and risk assessment. When it comes to these two variables, the USPSTF recommends that the when it is screening for the women to check if they may be having diseases such as cancers, the care providers should screen all the population that have family members with that type of cancer. The example given is the case of breast cancer. In this case the whole population that is all women related to the one having breast cancer, ovarian, peritoneal or even tubal cancer should be screened. The screening should use one of the several tools that are designed for screening. This is aimed at ensuring that the increased risk of harmful mutation in breast cancer susceptibility genes is identified. The genes in question in this question are BRCA1 and BRCA2. Upon the screening, women with positive screening results should be given proper counselling on genetics in the event they are indeed confirmed to test positive for BRCA.
Moreover, it is also essential to assess the risks that might be associated with certain diseases or disorders. This is important because it helps to create awareness on the risks and to identify who is more at risk of contracting it (Moyer, 2014). Thus, the people who are more at risk can take necessary caution and care to manage the risk. For example, according to the guide to preventive services 2014, older people, African Americans, and people with a family history of glaucoma are more at risk of having glaucoma. Therefore, they should be screened regularly (Force, 2014).
References:
Force, U. P. T. (2014). Guide to clinical preventive services. Available from https://www.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/publications/files/cpsguide.pdf [accessed on 14/6/2019]
Moyer, V. A. (2014). Screening for lung cancer: US Preventive Services Task Force recommendation statement. Annals of internal medicine, 160(5), 330-338.
