My prescriber ordered three tests and this board recommends about twenty, and I would like to know which of those two lists is right.
Post reference ranges alongside numbers when you share them. Units differ by country — glucose and lipids especially — and half the confusion in these threads is unit mismatch rather than disagreement.
What I am after is what actually belongs on a baseline panel, as opposed to the enormous list that gets pasted around here.
Not looking for reassurance. Looking for the part I have got wrong.
Short answer first, then the reasoning. The single most useful discipline is bringing the whole panel to a clinician rather than one flagged value. One out-of-range result in isolation generates anxiety and unnecessary tests; the same result next to the trend and the rest of the panel usually generates a shrug.
Dr.PeteFamMed said:The single most useful discipline is bringing the whole panel to a clinician rather than one flagged value.
Dr.PeteFamMed has the substance of this right. The condition it depends on is worth stating. One addition: if the lab changes analytical platform between your draws, the comparison breaks and nobody tells you. It is worth asking when a value moves inexplicably.
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Shop Reference StandardsJenPlateau said:My prescriber ordered three tests and this board recommends about twenty, and I would like to know which of those two lists is right.
This matches mine closely enough to be worth saying so. Quarterly for the first year is convention rather than evidence, and it is defensible for a simple reason: it is roughly the interval over which HbA1c becomes informative again, since it reflects about three months of glycaemia. After the first year, and once doses are stable, annual is reasonable unless something specific is being followed.
Adding the clinical framing, because it changes how the question reads.
PSA: get baseline labs BEFORE starting baseline bloodwork therapy. You need a "before" picture to measure progress. My recommended pre-treatment panel:
Total cost at Quest without insurance: ~$200. Worth every penny for the data.