By Selma Roth
We live in a health conscious world. Gym memberships soar; gluten-free options are widely available; superfood after superfood appears on the shelves. Yet, amidst this booming health industry, a large number of people wonder whether their current diet and lifestyle is sufficient to stay healthy. Are they not at risk for diabetes? Or heart disease? Do they have any abnormalities in their lungs, heart, or blood?
Such health fears are often fed by private health screening companies, who, under the motto “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, offer expensive tests that supposedly give people a better picture of their current physical state and point to any potential risk factors.
It may sound like a good idea to undergo a thorough examination every now and then. Imagine being able to detect plaque build-up in the arteries before a heart attack occurs, or knowing that you are at risk of developing diabetes, or that an ovarian cyst is found that you had no idea about. Discovering these abnormalities at an early stage means that action can be taken – whether that means surgery or a lifestyle change – before any damage has been done or the disease becomes irreversible.
However, not everyone is convinced of the benefits. Many doctors try to warn people of the downsides of private health screening, which go far beyond the hefty price tag.
In an article in The Guardian, Laurence Buckman, chairman of the British Medical Association’s general practitioners’ committee, gives the example of a heart scan, saying that a clear result on an ECG does not mean that you are not going to have a heart attack.
Worse yet is the opposite: What if the tests do show an abnormality? Dr Aniruddha Malpani claims that “Most health checkups are a scam meant to convert healthy people into patients”. According to her, state-of-the-art medical technology often reveals abnormalities that people otherwise would have happily carried into their grave.
“It’s a mathematical certainty that if you run a sufficient number of tests, you are bound to find abnormalities,” she writes on Firstpost.com, an online news platform based in India. Most of these are false positives – they are unlikely to be of any medical importance.
However, as soon as an abnormality is found, the patient will go to her GP, whether any physical complaints are present or not. Malpani gives the example of a woman who finds a small ovarian cyst during her checkup, which is the start of a medical snowball. “Ovarian cysts are very common in women and most will resolve on their own,” the doctor writes.
The right thing to do, according to her, would be to do nothing, but not many doctors have the courage to tell their patients this. What if the cyst grows or becomes cancerous? Would the patient sue her doctor? If, on the other hand, a surgery has been carried out as advised by the doctor, no one will know whether that was necessary or not. According to Malpani, the private health screening boom is giving way to an “epidemic of overtreatment,” and technological advancements are only likely to increase this.
The opposite can also be true. What if an obese smoker undergoes a series of tests and everything looks perfect? That person won’t feel any pressure to change his lifestyle, but the absence of any medical issues is no guarantee that person will stay healthy if he does not change his food and smoking habits.
Apart from these falls positives and negatives, screening risks include exposure to radiation and anxiety caused when a condition is discovered. Many doctors, therefore, advise against taking any private health checkups and instead urge people to eat healthful, exercise, quit smoking and do work they enjoy.
And those who are really worried about a certain condition they may have – because of symptoms they experience or a family history – are better of talking to their GP first about their concerns. Your country may offer free screening programs for those with higher risk factors, or at least your GP can assess the pros and cons of carrying out certain tests.
