Physical Examinations

It would happen occasionally on trips, when he was alone in a hotel bed, still wired from the night's game and distracted with thoughts of his family thousands of miles away. Scott Spiezio's heart would race a bit, and he would wonder ever so briefly, "What's that twitch?" Before, the Angel first baseman would quickly dismiss any worry. He is a healthy, strong, professional athlete. Then came June 22, when St.

When former president Jimmy Carter's sister, Gloria Carter Spann, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December, a leading oncologist suggested that the whole family undergo tests for that type of cancer. Carter's father, James Earl Carter Sr.; his brother, Billy Carter, and his sister, Ruth Carter Stapleton, all died of pancreatic cancer. And after actress Gilda Radner died last year of ovarian cancer, New York cancer researcher H.

For many women, the only obstacle standing between them and a career with the Los Angeles Police Department is a six-foot wooden wall. Scaling "the wall" is one of the Police Academy's pass-fail entrance requirements, part of an intense physical exam designed to weed out the weak from the strong. Fail it and forget a badge. The wall, with its emphasis on upper body strength, is one of the biggest reasons that women are turned away from the department.

In this age of managed care, many of us no longer have easy access to the best and brightest in medicine. Unless, of course, money is no object--or someone else is picking up the tab. If that's the case, you might get to experience something called the "executive physical." For $2,000 and up, you can spend two days getting poked and prodded, undergoing a battery of tests and talking at length to a top-notch doctor about your eating habits, family medical history and exercise routine.

California's required neurological examination for professional boxers, knocked from ringpost to ringpost by managers and promoters since its inception in 1986, nearly cost the Forum a world championship fight Monday. Raul Perez, the World Boxing Council bantamweight champion, failed the exam twice last week and didn't pass it until his third try, at mid-afternoon Monday, hours before he was to fight Gaby Canizales at the Forum.

A test for the human papilloma virus that does not require a pelvic exam may soon rival the Pap smear as an accurate way of screening for cancer and precancerous conditions in the cervix, researchers say. However, the test produced far more false positives than the Pap smear, causing many more women to need further testing, according to two studies in today's Journal of the American Medical Assn.

More than 50 million Americans have high blood pressure--and one-third of them don't know it. The condition, also known as hypertension, tends to arise earlier in men than in women, on average by about age 32. Because the average guy would rather clean out the garage than get a physical exam, younger men with high blood pressure almost always fly under the medical system's radar. "We never find 32-year-olds with hypertension," says Dr.

After criticism from women's and human rights organizations, Turkish Health Minister Osman Durmus denied that he authorized virginity tests for high school nursing students suspected of having sex. Durmus said this month that high school girls studying at government-run nursing schools would be expelled if they had sex and barred from studying at other government institutions. Newspapers reported that he was authorizing virginity tests, an order that nurses' and women's groups vowed to fight.

Doctors are said to make lousy patients. Now comes a study indicating that many docs avoid being patients altogether. Researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine decided to examine how well doctors took care of their health after previous studies suggested that doctors' bad habits--among them smoking and drinking--influence what they tell patients.

A high-tech program unveiled Monday will allow suspected victims of child abuse in the Antelope Valley to be examined by medical experts working in Los Angeles, saving the children a time-consuming, often unsettling 150-mile round trip. In a Lancaster hospital room decorated with Disney characters, children will be examined with a magnification device that can send video images over a telephone line to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.