General Health Checks Unlikely to Benefit Patients

Fitness is the only REAL preventive medicine. tm

Performing general health checks and screening asymptomatic adults for diseases or their risk factors did not reduce either overall morbidity or mortality, according to a review published online October 17 in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

The large number of participants and deaths in the studies, the long follow-up, and the absence of a reduction in cardiovascular and cancer mortality suggest that general health checks are unlikely to be beneficial, conclude Lasse T. Krogsbøll, MD, and colleagues, all from the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Denmark.

The review included data from 16 randomized studies from primary care or community settings comparing health checks or no health checks in adults "unselected" for disease or risk factors.

Instead of wasting time at the doc's looking for what is not there, spend the time getting fit to prevent the bad from happening.