“From the evidence we’ve seen, inviting patients to general
health checks is unlikely to be beneficial,” lead researcher
Lasse Krogsb?ll of The Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen,
Denmark said in a statement. “One reason for this might be
that doctors identify additional problems and take action
when they see patients for other reasons.”
Preventive screening remains controversial—and confusing—
for health care consumers. The intuitive power of screening
for disease to prevent it is hard to counter, but the latest
evidence, from government health groups such as the United
States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) shows that the
data don’t always support the idea that screening leads to
better health. When factoring things such as the cost of
screening and follow up tests to confirm false positive or
false negative results, the regular checkups aren’t always
beneficial.
MORE: Why Genetic Tests Don’t Help Doctors Predict Your Risk
of Disease
That’s the case with breast or prostate cancer, in which
studies show that mammograms or prostate specific antigen
(PSA) testing can lead to overtreatment of tumors that are
unlikely to cause serious disease during people’s lifetimes,
but cause unnecessary physical and emotional strain instead.
The USPSTF now recommends that women wait until age 50 (not
40) to get yearly mammograms, and that most men not get the
PSA test at all. “It is generally recognized that screening
should be based on evidence from randomized trials showing a
favorable balance between benefits and harms. In our review
we could not find that, and we therefore cannot see any
justification for public health programs pushing for routine
health checks,” says Krogsb?ll in an email response.
(MORE: Prostate Cancer Screening: What You Need to Know)
That leaves doctors and patients with the difficult challenge
of figuring out how much testing is enough. The researchers
are not advising doctors to discontinue screening and
treatment if they believe a patient has a health problem, but
they suggest public healthcare initiatives that
systematically offer general health checks to the public in
general might not make sense. That means that physicians may
need to spend more time with their patients to better
determine their individual risk for certain diseases,
something that may require a bigger investment of resources
initially, but may pay off in health care savings down the
road.
| michael kors wallet |
