Family Medicine Services

At RMD Primary Care, we believe that quality health care begins with preventative care and health maintenance. As a premier Lawrenceville family practice, we know the importance of helping our patients understand that the lifestyle choices they make today really will affect the quality of their lives in the future. Preventive care includes examinations and screening tests that are tailored to a patient’s age, health, and family history. This routine care can help prevent issues or find them before they become serious complications.

Although women tend to live longer on average than men, women also tend to neglect their own health, often putting their children’s needs, career and home obligations before their own needs. Women’s health covers a variety of illnesses, conditions and diseases, ranging from maternal care during pregnancy to performing early detection procedures for treating breast, uterine, ovarian and cervical cancers. Along with many other conditions, a large part of women’s health involves menopause and the changes and symptoms that come along with this time in a woman’s life.

One of the simplest and best things you can do to stay healthy is to have routine physical exams. Regular checkups for men for prostate examinations may very well catch a problem in its early stages when it is the most treatable. Women who have never had any symptoms of reproductive organ issues should get yearly PAP exams. The physical exam begins with checking the vital signs, which are pulse (heart rate), blood pressure, respiratory rate (breaths per minute), and temperature. Vital signs can often signal the presence of a problem, and they also establish a normal baseline to use as a reference point for future appointments. After the vitals, our Lawrenceville doctors approach the exam by system: cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, nervous, and musculoskeletal.

For women who are looking to achieve or prevent pregnancy, there are many family planning and birth control methods available. Our doctors will explain all of your options, as well as provide important information about preventing sexually transmitted diseases. Your discussion will cover the benefits and drawbacks of different family planning methods, failure rates, any potential risks and side effects, clear instructions for the chosen method and a concrete plan of action. We also offer numerous birth control methods, including barrier methods (such as cervical caps and diaphragms), birth control pills, hormonal patches, vaginal contraceptive rings, hormone shots, intrauterine devices (IUDs), as well as vasectomies and tubal ligations.

We provide testing, diagnosis, and treatment of allergies and various types of environmental reactions. This includes inhalant allergies, reactions to foods, hay fever, chronic sinus problems, immune disorders, eczema, hives and many others. Symptoms associated with allergies can be mild or severe, and range from sneezing and itchy, watery eyes to life-threatening anaphylaxis. The most common allergies are to mold, pollen, medications and foods, pet dander, insect bites, and others. We can perform skin tests for inhalant allergens, food and drugs as our family physicians see as necessary. Testing for hearing loss, measuring tympanic pressure, checking lung function and looking for allergy cells in nasal secretions are just some of the services we perform to care for our allergy sufferers.

Receiving vaccinations, also known as immunizations or shots, is an easy way to protect you or your child from serious, sometimes fatal illnesses. These immunizations should start at birth and continue throughout the course of a patient’s life. We provide routine childhood immunizations to protect your children from serious preventable illnesses, adult immunizations such as tetanus and diphtheria shots (which should be give once every ten years), and special immunizations such as those required if you are in close contact with people who have an infectious disease, you are planning on international travel or you live with a person who has a compromised immune system.

RMD Primary Care features an on-site CLIA certified lab. Just some of the laboratory work that is done in our on-site lab includes: blood gases, clinical chemistry, coagulation (disorder of blood clotting), hematology (CBC, spleen, lymph nodes, bone marrow), immunology (cytokines, T and B cells), microbiology and infectious disease, molecular biology (Western Blot, DNA testing), serology, transfusion medicine (blood banking), and urinalysis (examination of urine). We understand that waiting for lab results can be extremely stressful, so our office medical staff members work together with laboratory professionals to make sure that all lab tests are taken, results are interpreted and findings delivered to our patients as quickly as possible.

Worldwide, communicable diseases kill more people than any other single affliction, and are caused by an unknown number of different germs including viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and others. Communicable diseases are spread by touching, drinking, eating or breathing something that contains a germ, or microbe. Our Lawrenceville Family Practice treats communicable diseases of all different types for our patients. The best way to prevent contracting communicable diseases is to practice good hand washing on a consistent basis, staying current with immunizations and vaccines, eating a well-balanced diet and getting enough sleep. Our doctors also have some medicines that can help prevent certain types of infections, many of which are only most effective when administered very soon after the first signs of symptoms appear. It is for this reason that it is important to contact our Lawrenceville doctors as soon as you suspect an illness.

Influenza, also known simply as “the flu,” can be much more serious than many people realize, and is sometimes deadly. It is a respiratory infection that is caused by a number of different viruses that pass through the air and enter the body through the nose or mouth. Those who are at the greatest risk for serious complications and even death from the flu are the elderly, newborn infants and people with certain chronic illnesses, particularly those which compromise the immune system. Symptoms of the flu can often come on suddenly, and while at first they may be similar to symptoms of a cold, they are oftentimes much worse. Some of the common symptoms of the flu may include: low-grade or high fever, chills, sore throat, nasal congestion, cough, headache, and muscle or body aches. Getting a yearly flu vaccine is the best way to keep from contracting the illness.