A lumbar puncture can help diagnose serious infections, such as meningitis; other disorders of the central nervous system, such as Guillain-Barre syndrome and multiple sclerosis; bleeding; or cancers of the brain or spinal cord.
Weird Exam #1: Your Doctor Puts a Stethoscope on Your Back
This helps doctors hear your lungs—especially the two lower lobes, which you can't hear at all from the front of your body, explains Robin Maier, M.D., an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Within minutes of listening to you “take a deep breath in,” doctors can hear for abnormalities that may indicate if you need emergency attention, thus saving your life.
Normally, the abdominal cavity contains only a small amount of fluid. In certain conditions, large amounts of fluid can build up in this space. An abdominal tap can help diagnose the cause of fluid buildup or the presence of an infection. It may also be done to remove a large amount of fluid to reduce belly pain.
Doctors can hear the tell-tale sounds of a leaky valve and pinpoint which valve is leaking and the amount of blood leaking. Arrhythmias. Physicians can hear if the patient has a normal heart rhythm or if the patient has an abnormal rhythm, called an arrhythmia, like atrial fibrillation.
Your doctor will examine you and use a stethoscope to listen for wheezing or other abnormal chest sounds. Lung function and imaging tests will tell your doctor whether you have COPD and how serious it is.
There's no specific test to identify lung injuries. After checking your symptoms and vital signs, your doctor may order a chest X-ray. This will determine the amount of fluid in different parts of your lungs. Since lung injuries and heart problems often share symptoms, this test can also show if your heart is enlarged.
Background: The finger-tapping test is a commonly employed quantitative assessment tool used to measure motor performance in the upper extremities. This task is a complex motion that is affected by external stimuli, mood and health status.
Pressing on your stomach is a way to find out if the size of your internal organs is normal, to check if anything hurts, and to feel if anything unusual is going on.
Such pain indicates that the peritoneum, or the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity, is inflamed--as often happens when the appendix becomes diseased, the bowel is perforated or there is peritonitis.
It's a way to get clues about what's going on in your body before it erupts. Take digestion as an example: The tongue can reveal an imbalance in the digestive system, although it doesn't lead to a specific diagnosis, like irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn's disease.
Have you been to the doctor before and they have shined light in your eyes? This is called a pupillary light test. This test is designed to look at the constriction of your pupils when exposed to light.
By examining your eyes in this way, your eye doctor can often detect conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, arterial plaque, multiple sclerosis, brain tumors, stroke, leukemia and many other conditions.
There are a couple reasons we feel your neck: we check your lymph nodes and your thyroid. Feeling your neck and under your ears is a way to see if your lymph nodes (often referred to as glands) are enlarged. It's normal for them to increase in size when your body is fighting an infection.
Checking the back and sides of the neck can tip off your healthcare provider to muscle spasms or problems in your spinal column. These might be pinching a nerve and causing pain. Your healthcare provider can also find other chains of enlarged lymph nodes.
A health care provider will perform a physical exam and listen to your chest using a stethoscope. The provider may hear abnormal sounds in your lungs (called crackles), a heart murmur, or other abnormal sounds. You may have a fast or uneven pulse.
The purpose of the squeeze test is to aid in the diagnosis of syndesmotic ankle sprains.
Most often, a lump in the abdomen is caused by a hernia. An abdominal hernia occurs when there is a weak spot in the abdominal wall. This allows the internal organs to bulge through the muscles of the abdomen. A hernia may appear after you strain, or lift something heavy, or after a long period of coughing.
Ask You to Turn Your Head and Cough
If your doctor uses their hand to feel your scrotum -- the sack of skin that holds your testicles -- as you cough, they are looking for signs of something called an inguinal hernia.
The finger tapping test evaluates bradykinesia, focusing on decrement in rate, amplitude, or both with repetitive action. Vertical positioning of the hands during this task may also be clinically relevant.
The finger-to-nose test assesses equilibrium and coordination.
In finger tapping the patient is instructed to tap the index finger on the thumb as fast possible and as big as possible. This means that the patient should try to separate the two fingers as much as possible before tapping them. Make sure to test both the right and the left side.
Shortness of breath: It's not normal to experience shortness of breath that doesn't go away after exercising, or that you have after little or no exertion. Labored or difficult breathing—the feeling that it is hard to breathe in out—is also a warning sign.