What do students check for in routine physical examinations?

I have been doing school health care for almost ten years, and parents often ask me what students’ routine physical examinations check. In fact, the core focus is on three major directions: growth and development monitoring, basic health screening, and screening for high-risk diseases and infectious diseases on campus. Specific items will be adapted and adjusted for different school age groups, and there is no unified fixed list.

Last week, I helped two of my neighbor's children upstairs organize their physical examination receipts and discovered that my sister, who has just entered second grade, has a pit and fissure sealing screening, a preliminary scoliosis test, and the annual roundworm egg test that must be done. My brother, who is in the first grade of junior high school, has blood pressure monitoring, pulmonary function tests, and tuberculin (PPD) re-screening on his physical examination form. Even the vision examination has the option of dilating myopia. After all, myopia progresses quickly in junior high school, and early detection of changes in degree can lead to timely intervention.

Many parents ask whether they should pay for hepatitis B antibodies and six sex hormone tests. In fact, there is no unified opinion in the industry. Many colleagues who do school physical examinations all year round believe that regular hepatitis B surface antigen screening has been done at school. As long as the child has been vaccinated with hepatitis B vaccine and confirmed to have antibodies, there is no need to check every year.； However, some doctors from the child health department suggest that since children now have a high proportion of eating out and participating in day care, it is more reliable to test the hepatitis B antibody titer every 2-3 years. As for the sex hormone test, unless the child shows obvious signs of early development/developmental lag, there is no need to do it regularly, which may easily cause unnecessary anxiety.

When I followed the physical examination team to a suburban primary school for screening, I met several children who could not sit still and always complained of back pain. Mild scoliosis was discovered during the routine spine appearance screening. Because it was discovered early, they only needed to adjust their sitting posture and do rehabilitation exercises. It can be corrected, but if parents discover something is wrong on their own, it may develop to the point where they need to wear a brace. This is also the biggest difference between student physical examinations and ordinary adult physical examinations - they will specifically focus on small growth and development problems that the children do not feel and that parents easily ignore.

In high school, especially in the third year of high school, the physical examination items will be adjusted again, and special attention will be paid to changes in intraocular pressure and vision. After all, the eyes are used intensively during the examination preparation period. Many schools will also add a simple preliminary evaluation of emotional state to detect children's stress problems in advance. For students preparing for the college entrance examination, special examinations such as color weakness, smell, and transaminase will be added as required by the admissions office, so as to facilitate subsequent reference when filling in the application form.