The Value of Your Annual Well-Woman Visit | What You Should Know

Transcript:

Jamie Forward: What is the value of a yearly well woman exam?  

Dr. Wendy Levin: This is important to talk about beyond breast cancer because there are a lot of other areas in women’s health that we need to address.

So, for example, we have a recommendation for comprehensive care beyond the Pap smear. So, many patients mistakenly believe that if they don’t need a Pap smear that year, that they can skip their well woman visit. And the truth of the matter is that part of that comprehensive preventive medical visit goes beyond the Pap smear because a manual exam can identify manual palpation. So, a pelvic and abdominal exam allows for palpation to check for structural abnormalities. Ovarian masses. Pelvic floor issues.

There’s a clinical risk stratification that we use in general just to calculate breast cancer risk scores. And we look at how we can also evaluate lifestyle modifications. Update family histories. And then, finally and equally importantly, there’s a mental and reproductive health screening that’s very important for a yearly well woman exam.

So, we screen for things like clinical depression, perimenopausal, menopausal symptoms. Sexual health concerns are also important, and they’re frequently overlooked in the standard problem-based visits that you may have with your primary care physician.