Men's Health

STI Testing + Treatment

Testing and treatment are easy and quick

When you go to a doctor or health care worker for an STI check, they'll ask you some questions about your sexual practices to find out which parts of your body may have been put at risk for an STI (i.e. penis, rectum or throat). This helps them decide which sorts of testing are needed.

An STI check up for a man who has had sex with men usually involves:

A blood sample to check for HIV, syphilis and immunity to hepatitis A and B
A urine sample to check for chlamydia
A swab of your arse to check for chlamydia and gonorrhoea (a swab is like a cotton bud you would use to clean inside your ears)
A swab of your throat to check for gonorrhoea
A physical examination to check for crabs, scabies, warts and herpes

These tests are recommended for all gay men who don’t have any symptoms. Even if you don’t have any symptoms it's still possible to have an STI and pass on the infection. Testing is the only way to know for sure. Your doctor or health care worker may suggest other tests like hepatitis C or genital herpes depending on your sexual history and drug use.

Counselling for HIV tests

Before you are tested for HIV your doctor or health care worker should discuss the test, its meanings and its implications. The doctor or health care worker will gauge your understanding of HIV and discuss how it's transmitted and how to protect yourself. This is known as pre-test counselling.

In this discussion the doctor or health care worker should discuss the implications of a positive and a negative result with you, including what support services you may need to access after your result.

You should find out about the "window period" for HIV (the time after infection but before an HIV test will show up positive) and if you need to be re-tested.

You should always be given the results of your HIV test in person – not over the phone. This is so that the doctor or health care worker can also discuss the meaning of the test result with you, including whether you need to be re-tested. This is called post-test counselling.

If you have questions or concerns that haven’t been addressed during the discussion, raise them with your doctor or health care worker.