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Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

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Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#31

Post by Bud »

nlh wrote: post #19
im3w1l wrote: post #11

I find this sentiment almost offensive. Like it goes against everything I believe to say that less data is better. But the root of it is pretty clear "even basic blood tests can lead to unnecessary interventions or treatments". It's the belief that a test leads to interventions. But it doesn't have to of course. An intervention is a decision, and if an intervention is likely to be unnecessary, then they shouldn't int…

Agreed 100%. It's absurd. The results get distilled as "more data leads to worse outcomes" and that's ridiculous -- it should be: "more data leads to bad decisions which lead to worse outcomes". We should ALWAYS strive to have more and better data. What needs to change is how we (and our doctors) respond to that data.

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Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#32

Post by newaccount74 »

im3w1l wrote: post #11

I find this sentiment almost offensive. Like it goes against everything I believe to say that less data is better. But the root of it is pretty clear "even basic blood tests can lead to unnecessary interventions or treatments". It's the belief that a test leads to interventions. But it doesn't have to of course. An intervention is a decision, and if an intervention is likely to be unnecessary, then they shouldn't int…

If you ignore elevated values, why test in the first place?

Also, often the test itself is somewhat invasive. Sticking various apparatuses into our bodies comes with all kinds of risks, so it better be worthwhile to do it.

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#33

Post by [deleted] »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #7

I find this to be dubious and honestly a little insulting. Here in the UK there is a not insignificant number of people that die from cancers because their local health practice ignored or even refused to listen to a patient. The idea of a yearly checkup is totally foreign here unless you are going private.

[deleted]

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#34

Post by NhanH »

SilasX wrote: post #13
belter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, the scenario is somewhat discussed in the article: "...Rivero used as an example a request he receives frequently: to check the cholesterol of young people with no risk factors. “Checking a 32-year-old man with no history of sudden death or hypercholesterolemia in the family is pointless,” and can result in prescriptions for medication of questionable usefulness and that is not without risk in the even…

I get the logic, but … isn’t this failure mode the fault of the doctor, for overreacting to a minor issue/non-issue, rather than the patient for getting yearly checkups?

The issue is that doctors are biased to seeing a biased sample of human who are encountering problems. So in a way, they have to overreact always since the number of patients NOT having issues and seeing them due to the yearly checkups are way less than the number of people who are having problems.

The problem might go away if somehow we got a significant percentage of the general population to do health checkup, balancing out the unhealthy population (in meeting doctors). But that is nigh impossible, and might just overwhelm the whole doctor system altogether

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#36

Post by tremon »

ultim8k wrote: post #5

That’s BS if I may. How would I know I have higher cholesterol if I didn’t do blood tests?

Higher compared to what? Have you established what your healthy baseline cholesterol level is, or are you just assuming that whatever the literature uses as its favourite test demographic accurately captures your age/metabolism/lifestyle?

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#38

Post by 908B64B197 »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #7

I find this to be dubious and honestly a little insulting. Here in the UK there is a not insignificant number of people that die from cancers because their local health practice ignored or even refused to listen to a patient. The idea of a yearly checkup is totally foreign here unless you are going private.

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Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#39

Post by hospitalJail »

SilasX wrote: post #13
belter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, the scenario is somewhat discussed in the article: "...Rivero used as an example a request he receives frequently: to check the cholesterol of young people with no risk factors. “Checking a 32-year-old man with no history of sudden death or hypercholesterolemia in the family is pointless,” and can result in prescriptions for medication of questionable usefulness and that is not without risk in the even…

I get the logic, but … isn’t this failure mode the fault of the doctor, for overreacting to a minor issue/non-issue, rather than the patient for getting yearly checkups?

I'm a bit mind boggled there is even a human involved here.

Lab results + Patient data = Diagnosis + Prescription

Why is there a Physician deciding if medicine is needed? The patient data from the original visit + lab should be enough, not sure why a second visit is needed. (This is only a problem because Physicians make somewhere between $250-$500/hr, if we had a market drive supply of Physicians, I don't think this question would be important)

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#40

Post by epistasis »

elankart wrote: post #25

I call bullshit on this. I had a very rare heart condition that was discovered during one of my yearly check ups. Chasing the root cause led us to even more scarier findings.

How many examples of bad outcomes would it take to retract your "bullshit" assessment?

Ideally, somebody would take all the good that came from the checkups, and compare that to the amount of bad effects where poor interventions were chosen, and weigh them out. Such a study would be quite useful...

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