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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

#171

Post by secabeen »

noirbot wrote: post #112
waterhouse wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the odds of the monitor detecting something in the intervening time and the intervention being correct are lower than the odds of the intervention causing some other unwanted side effect. Huh. So that means, when the doctor decides to intervene based on what the continuous monitor comes up with, the interventions have negative expected value? Which means the doctors are making bad decisions about what interventions…

It somewhat makes sense to me. Measuring all the time, you're susceptible to odd readings that are essentially false positives. If your device has a 1/1000 false positive rate, but you're usually only making one reading with it at a time, that's maybe acceptable. If you're making a million readings over a week because you're checking every second, than you're almost definitely going to have it show the same false pos…

Yep, it's a form of the Base Rate Fallacy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

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

#172

Post by twblalock »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #164
_skel wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I know who had cancer (and that is a large and increasingly growing list...) found out about it because they went in to the doctor for a non-routine appointment because they felt pain, or felt a lump, or had a weird reaction to a vaccine, or whatever else. Even early stage cancer can produce symptoms, and luckily most of those people survived.

Interesting, I thought some of them were asymptomatic

Some may be, but all I know is that some definitely aren't.

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

#173

Post by holbrad »

hayst4ck wrote: post #151

Half the posts in this thread bring back the old SlashDot adage: The plural of anecdote is not data. I am not sure what the point this article is trying to make is. I do not feel more informed for having read it. It seems a populist appeal to the idea that the medical institution has no idea what it is doing. Is it good, is it bad? It doesn't matter. The end result is damaged institutional trust. How many people woul…

"yeah doctors have no idea what they are doing" isn't really that far off the mark for a lot of things.

The health of the average person in the west (And globally) is in decline. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer are all massively massively increased from where they were 100 years ago.

If the standard advice given isn't working for people (And it most obviously is not) then looking for alternatives really is the only thing people feel they can do.

In todays age being average in health is a poor decision.

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

#174

Post by ramblenode »

kornhole wrote: post #162
hayst4ck wrote: post #151

Half the posts in this thread bring back the old SlashDot adage: The plural of anecdote is not data. I am not sure what the point this article is trying to make is. I do not feel more informed for having read it. It seems a populist appeal to the idea that the medical institution has no idea what it is doing. Is it good, is it bad? It doesn't matter. The end result is damaged institutional trust. How many people woul…

This article gives people things to consider and does not dare give specific advice. Everybody is different. Some people are in touch with their bodies and can detect if something is going wrong, and others are not. Institutions and pharmaceutical companies can adversely affect our health if they are able to influence doctors to advise us wrongly in a for profit health care industry. If you look at the health of the…

> Everybody is different. Some people are in touch with their bodies and can detect if something is going wrong, and others are not.

Piggybacking off the parent, this is a major issue that medicine doesn't seem to have figured out how to deal with. Some people are so in touch with themselves they can tell they are getting sick before they have any measurable symptoms. Other people go months or years without knowing something is seriously wrong. Because modern medicine is about systematizing decisions (everything is a code), the patient's own internal sensations are given little weight compared to the measurements of an external instrument. The result is that if the particular set of tests which were ordered show nothing abormal then it can be hard or impossible to get treatment.

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

#175

Post by eloff »

There seems to be some solid data that mammograms, colonoscopies, and treating prostate cancer (with many caveats on that last one) is actually mostly not beneficial in reducing overall mortality.

The reasons are likely complex and nuanced, but do your research carefully if your doctor is trying to talk you into one of those. You probably will only benefit their next car payment, not your health.

For a mammogram, it doesn’t increase survival over a manual exam.

For colonoscopies, you have one in 1400 chances of saving a life and one in 1000 chances of perforating a bowel and dying here and now instead of in 30 years. There’s another exam with lower risks and most of the benefits.

For prostate cancer, if you have the aggressive kind, intervention has almost no effect. You’re dead either way.

If you have the slow growing kind, you’ll likely die of something else. The risks of treatment are mostly balanced against the benefit. But treatment will nuke your quality of life.

I don’t have time too dig up sources right now, so don’t take my word for it. Look for the studies, they’re quite approachable.

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

#176

Post by thfuran »

holbrad wrote: post #173
hayst4ck wrote: post #151

Half the posts in this thread bring back the old SlashDot adage: The plural of anecdote is not data. I am not sure what the point this article is trying to make is. I do not feel more informed for having read it. It seems a populist appeal to the idea that the medical institution has no idea what it is doing. Is it good, is it bad? It doesn't matter. The end result is damaged institutional trust. How many people woul…

"yeah doctors have no idea what they are doing" isn't really that far off the mark for a lot of things. The health of the average person in the west (And globally) is in decline. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer are all massively massively increased from where they were 100 years ago. If the standard advice given isn't working for people (And it most obviously is not) then looking for alternatives really i…

>The health of the average person in the west (And globally) is in decline. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer are all massively massively increased from where they were 100 years ago.

In the US, life expectancy has increased by 30 years since 1900. People weren't dying of cancer and heart disease as frequently because 24% of them had already died by the age of five.

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

#177

Post by juve1996 »

user3939382 wrote: post #156
hayst4ck wrote: post #151

Half the posts in this thread bring back the old SlashDot adage: The plural of anecdote is not data. I am not sure what the point this article is trying to make is. I do not feel more informed for having read it. It seems a populist appeal to the idea that the medical institution has no idea what it is doing. Is it good, is it bad? It doesn't matter. The end result is damaged institutional trust. How many people woul…

We can’t have faith in any of our society’s major institutions because they’re all corrupt https://youtu.be/z6IO2DZjOkY

How can I have faith in this youtube video? Is it not corrupt, to? How can I trust the guy in the video?

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

#178

Post by makeitdouble »

This article is really aimed at the more dubious tests (e.g. cholesterol) than doing yearly checkups per se.

I'd agree with the idea that some tests aren't as good as others, and we lump critical checkups (let's say cardiography) with more shakier ones, like waist circumference or cholesterol. Finding issue with the later falls a lot more into pop science than actual hard evidence based physical intervention.

Removing the pop science from the periodical checkups would definitely be a good idea, stopping yearly checkups altogether is throwing the baby with the bath water.

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

#180

Post by aj7 »

Cholesterol and blood pressure can reach out of normal levels fairly suddenly. They need to be treated as soon as this evidence appears. All sorts of conditions can be spotted by a capable practitioner. Contrary to the tone of the article, most doctors are not over-treating; they will watch something that’s on the borderline. I fear that this article will give justification to the many people who are “too busy” or just don’t like going to the doctor.

Oh and by the way. I know of no better analogy, as you grow older and things start failing, than that the body is like an old car. You’ll see, mark my words.

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