Making Sense of Your Screening Feedback

Thank you for taking part in Airwave Tissue Bank health-screening. We greatly appreciate your participation.

To help you make sense of your feedback letter, we have created a short booklet that explains the background to the tests we've done on your blood and what they can mean.  You can download it at the link below. The document has two sections: the first provides some background information on the lifestyle and physical measurements; the second is a description of the blood tests that we aim to carry out on your samples.

We have also included versions of the feedback booklet from 2006 and 2016 to aid comparisons with previous results.

Test results are given with a ‘reference range’, which is a way of comparing your results with the normal range found in a healthy population. A test result outside the reference range may or may not indicate a problem: you may have an unusually high or low value but have nothing wrong. Typically, 5% of healthy people will fall outside the reference range; and incidental circumstances may give an out-of-range or ambiguous result without it indicating a major problem. For example, a high blood sugar could be diet-related rather than caused by diabetes.

There is further discussion of reference ranges here.

IMPORTANT: Whether your test result is within the laboratory reference range or not, it must be considered within the context of your personal circumstances. Only you and your doctor have sufficient knowledge of your past medical history and the results of other investigations to make a definitive interpretation of what these results mean for you. We are unable to interpret your results or give you specific advice. If you need further explanation of your results, please consult your doctor.

For more details on the background to these measurements, you may like to visit Lab Tests Online or Patient Information.