• Cardiac hypertension is one of the common conditions that now may be monitored at home.blood pressure monitor image by Shirley Hirst from Fotolia.com
  
  As the "baby boom" generation reaches senior citizenship, Americans are becoming more aware of methods that help monitor their health. There are several routine diagnostic and screening tests that aid in this, including tests that can be performed at home and those that are performed regularly in doctors' offices, hospitals, schools and workplaces.
  
  

Serum Glucose

• The incidence of Type 2 diabetes is so high that TV ads are common for diabetes supplies, especially the meters that diabetics may use to check for excess sugar circulating in their blood.
  
  

Toxicology Urinalysis

• While you may not as often think of workplace testing for drug use in the same category as health-related urinalysis, it uses samples collected under even more stringent controls, and notices about testing are common in all businesses. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services maintains an extensive program to support this testing.
  
  

MRI and CT Scans

• Two forms of imaging that provide highly detailed views inside the body are sometimes offered for mass screening without a doctor's order. A computerized-tomography scan, or CT, uses the same X-rays as old-fashioned "films," but passes them through the body at hundreds of angles and cross-sections. CT can visualize soft tissues as well as bone and is especially suited to showing internal bleeding. In magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, a powerful magnetic field aligns your body's water molecules while radio waves cause these aligned particles to produce faint signals. These signals are recorded by a computer and used to produce detailed three-dimensional images.
  
  

Mammogram

• A series of X-rays of the breast, mammograms are most familiar as routine screening of women. They're used diagnostically to focus attention on one or more areas identified as suspicious by X-ray screening or physically detecting a lump.
  
  

PSA

• Blood levels of prostate-specific antigen are being routinely checked in men as young as 40 to provide ongoing monitoring of fluctuations of this substance produced by both normal and cancerous prostate cells. Any suspicions raised by PSA findings call for more invasive tests.
  
  

Colonoscopy

• The common screening and diagnostic test for the very lowest end of the digestive tract is performed in a medical facility. Doctors can directly observe the condition of the colon wall, remove tissue samples and treat minor or precancerous abnormalities.
  
  

Blood-Pressure Monitoring

• A vital sign still measured by medical professionals using an instrument common for about a century, blood pressure is also now measured by patients at home and in stores using simpler devices. All of the devices measure the push of blood in the arteries as the heart beats and when it rests. Low blood pressure can explain fainting or alert doctors to internal injury. High blood pressure, or hypertension, is the chronic condition that all the screening is about, because it can lead to heart attacks, strokes and other organ failures.