Monday, February 11, 2013

Annual health screening: does it do more harm than good?

Telegraph (UK) ^ | October 17th, 2012 | Andrew M Brown

Do you have an annual health check? Plenty of people do. Health screening – general checks on people who don’t have any symptoms – is widely promoted by private doctors and health insurance companies – and popular. Successful executives, who are used to being in control, understandably think of their health as another area where, if they take prudent precautions, they can minimise risks.

And they are not suggesting that doctors shouldn’t screen or test patients when they suspect something is going on. They approve of targeted interventions for specific conditions.

More worrying, though, is the fact that there are the many possible undesirable effects of general checks. Stephanie Thompson and Marcello Tonelli of the Cochrane Library note that “the potential for harm is likely to exceed the potential for benefit when screening is implemented in a population where the overall risk of an unfavorable outcome is low”. You may get over-diagnosis, where the tests pick up a disease that, if it hadn’t been detected, would not have affected the quality or length of your life. Abnormal test results can also lead to the need for more tests, which means more risk, worry, lost income due to work absences, problems getting health insurance, and potentially increased healthcare costs.

The health checks studied weren’t completely useless. Some of them picked up cases of high blood pressure and raised cholesterol levels...

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...

T-Shirt