Health experts are once again urging individuals to consider resuming their annual exams and screenings.
The message comes as ages for preventative care screenings have changed in recent years. For example, health professionals most recently recommend women get screened for breast cancer at 40 years old instead of 50. This comes after the age for getting a colonoscopy was lowered from 50 to 45-years-old.
"With school starting there's a lot more well-child checks and sports physicals," said Dr. Jonathan Dickman, a primary care physician at Allina Health. "Those are critical for many reasons. For sports physicals, it's to screen for congenital heart problems, asthma, vision, and hearing. Well-child checks are a great to discuss how the kid is developing."
Dr. Dickman says he is starting to see more people come back into the doctor's office for their yearly physicals, which he adds are important for updating charts, staying up-to-date with medications, and making sure their medical conditions are correct.
According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), cancer screenings dropped 80 percent during the first two months of the pandemic. ACS researchers revealed earlier this year that between 2019 and 2021, past-year screening in the United States decreased from 59.9% to 57.1% for breast cancer, from 45.3% to 39.0% for cervical cancer, and from 39.5% to 36.3% for prostate cancer.
"I think the benefit of the screening is to make sure we can remove lesions that will not require as intensive intervention as if we caught it late," Dr. Dickman said. "When we catch things later things have progressed further along and then the interventions get for more intense and for more debilitating."
There are screenings many don't think about, including lung cancer screenings.
"Lung cancer is one of the most devastating diagnoses, but now with this screening the hope is we can catch these lesions that are concerning much earlier where we can actually have a curative intervention. That's for people who have smoked between the ages of 50 and 80. They'd get an imaging once a year and look for any lesions in the lungs."
A full list of cancer screening recommendations can be found on the ACS website.