Lab Testing

OPAL Healthcare & Wellness

Primary Care Practice located in Dallas, TX

We are a Primary Care facility that offers medical weight loss treatments and much more. Call us to book your appointment today. Lab testing is a powerful tool to learn more about how your body is functioning. It is also among the services available through Michaela Klose, APRN, FNP-BC, NP-C, and Christiane Jamieson, APRN, FNP-C, at OPAL Healthcare & Wellness in Dallas, Texas. Lab testing is a routine part of excellent primary care and will help inform and guide your overall treatment path. Booking an appointment takes very little time using the online scheduling page, or you can always call to speak with a friendly member of the administrative staff.

Lab Testing Q & A

What is lab testing?

Lab testing is an analysis of a small sample of your urine, blood, or other tissues. It is a common part of primary care and allows your practitioner to gain greater insight into how your organs and systems are functioning.

Lab testing can provide a baseline that helps build your medical record. It can also be used as a diagnostic tool to determine the cause of symptoms to screen for disease.

By having routine lab testing performed, your primary care team will be able to detect changes that could help identify an area of concern in the earliest possible stages, when intervention is often most effective. Another common use of lab testing is to evaluate how well your body is responding to medication or other treatments.

How are my lab results evaluated?

Lab testing reveals a snapshot of information about your body is working at a given point in time. Those results are compared against the results from a nationwide sample of individuals within your age range and gender. This is how your health team knows where you fall along the spectrum of health.

Your lab results are also compared against your previous personal testing results. This can show trends over time, which is a powerful tool in detecting disease or assessing how well a treatment plan is working.

Some lab testing can be processed in-house, while other tests are sent to an outside lab for evaluation. Your health team takes a proactive approach in getting your results in and sharing them with you as quickly as possible.

What are some examples of lab testing?

Routine blood screening is perhaps the most well-known form of lab testing. By drawing a small sample of your blood, a vast range of tests can be performed. Some of the information that can be gleaned from blood testing includes:

Blood glucose
Thyroid function
Sexually transmitted infection
Metabolic function
Kidney function
Cholesterol
Liver function
White blood cell count
Red blood cell count
Iron levels
Nutritional deficiencies

This is far from a comprehensive list. Blood testing offers the ability to gather a significant volume of data with a relatively simple and straightforward testing procedure.

Other types of lab tests include urinalysis, Pap smear testing, strep testing, and influenza rapid antigen testing. If you have questions or concerns about lab testing or lab evaluation, reach out to the office online or by phone to book a visit.