Health Check-Up

For most healthy adults, every one to two years is reasonable, with the specific cancer screenings on their own schedules — colonoscopy every ten years if normal, mammography every one to two years, HPV testing every five. Annual testing of everything is more frequent than any guideline supports and mostly increases false positives.

For most people, no. It carries no radiation, which is a genuine advantage over CT, but no major guideline recommends it for screening healthy adults because it finds a large number of harmless abnormalities and has never been shown to reduce deaths. It has a role in specific high-risk genetic syndromes, decided by a specialist rather than chosen from a menu.

Often yes, and it is sensible — many patients coming for surgery need pre-operative assessment anyway, and a check-up can be built around it. The order matters: screening should be done before surgery, not after, so that anything found can change the plan while there is still time.

Most findings are minor and manageable at home — raised cholesterol, low iron, an early thyroid change. Where something needs urgent attention, we arrange the next step immediately, whether that is a specialist consultation, a biopsy, or a second opinion from the oncology network this service was built on. You will not be handed a worrying result and left to find your own way forward.

Yes — plan on 8 to 12 hours without food before the blood tests. Water is allowed and encouraged; dehydration makes the blood draw harder. Take your regular prescription medicines with a sip of water unless your doctor said otherwise, and skip coffee, tea, cigarettes and chewing gum, all of which shift glucose and lipid readings.

A standard checkup takes 4 to 6 hours in a single morning, and the extended programmes run into a second day. You arrive fasting, give blood first, then move through imaging, cardiology and the specialist consultations in one continuous circuit. Most patients are free by early afternoon and keep the rest of the day for themselves.

Blood and imaging results are ready the same day, and you review them face to face with the physician before you leave. The written report follows by email within 24 to 48 hours in English, as a PDF with the raw laboratory values and reference ranges included. Send it to your own doctor directly, or ask us to email it on your behalf.

Yes, because the conditions a checkup is built to find are silent at the stage where they are easiest to treat. High blood pressure, raised blood sugar, elevated cholesterol, early kidney strain and thyroid changes cause no symptoms for years. Feeling well is not evidence that these numbers are normal — it is simply the absence of a warning sign.

Under 40 the core is blood work, blood pressure, an ECG and an abdominal ultrasound. From 40 add a cardiac stress test and, for women, mammography; from 45 to 50 add colon screening for everyone. Family history moves these dates earlier — a parent with bowel cancer or early heart disease usually brings screening forward by ten years.

You see the relevant specialist the same day, in the same building, usually within a couple of hours. Most abnormal findings need only a repeat test or a second imaging study, and both can be added to your existing visit. If something needs treatment, you get a written plan with costs and timing, and you are free to take that plan home and decide there.

Yes, and for surgical patients it is usually done first, on the day before the operation. The preoperative work-up already overlaps with a checkup — blood count, clotting, ECG, chest imaging — so extending it into a full programme adds little time and no second trip. For hair or dental patients the checkup fits easily into a free morning.

Yes, the age-appropriate screenings are part of the programme: mammography and cervical smear for women, prostate testing for men over 50, abdominal ultrasound and, in the extended packages, low-dose lung CT for long-term smokers and colonoscopy from around 45. A checkup screens for the common cancers with proven tests; it is not a whole-body scan for every possible tumour.