9. How Is Your Mental Well-Being?
Some 1 in 10 women suffer from depression each year, and 1 in 8 experience postpartum depression, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “In primary care, we believe mental and emotional health are just as important as physical health,” Duah says. That’s why many doctors administer short questionnaires to screen for common mental-health conditions.
One test is the patient health questionnaire 9, or PHQ-9, which screens for depression by asking nine basic questions about your mood.
Another common screen is the generalized anxiety disorder assessment (GAD-7), which can reveal signs of this common anxiety disorder.
10. Smoking and Lung Cancer
Regular smokers between 50 and 80 years old should be checked for lung cancer once each year, according to the CDC. This applies to anyone with a history of smoking on the order of one pack a day for 20 years or two packs a day for 10, and who either currently smokes or has quit within the past 15 years.
Lung cancer screens are done with low-dose computed tomography (low-dose CT or LDCT), where a specialized X-ray machine takes detailed images of the lungs.