What are the advantages of annual medical checkups?
Cause symptoms in early stages could be Early detection of disease that may not identified. Detection of high cholesterol, blood pressure, and high blood glucose and appropriate treatment can prevent heart attack or a paralytic stroke.
What about preventive care?
These tests should also include preventive measures such as mammograms and colonoscopies. Preventive steps can reduce the risk of developing very damaging effects on the body.
Can it help your doctor to see the changing trends?
Changing trends in most investigations are important to your doctor to take early appropriate steps to control your disease. For example, changing levels of Vitamin D or B12 or Creatinine or body weight is important.
Does it help health education and Counselling?
Checkups provide an opportunity to discuss lifestyle factors like smoking cessation, alcohol intake, exercise, and illicit drug use promoting healthier behaviours. Regular checkups can reduce anxiety and can provide reassurance.
What are the major pitfalls?
This can sometimes lead to the discovery of benign conditions, leading to further unnecessary tests, treatment, and anxiety. Certain tests may lead to false positive or false negative results. This may lead to unnecessary tests and sometimes a false sense of security respectively.
Can annual checks detect all I diseases?
Certainly not. It is always better to see your doctor first, discuss your health problems with him your personal and family history and then proceed for the tests. Every annual check up should be determined by the needs of the individual person. As much as for the tests a thorough clinical examination is necessary. Psychological factors, early cancers, autoimmune disorders in early stages can all be missed. The time spent face to face building a relationship with your primary care provider will allow you to have individualised care plan that meets your needs and improve health outcomes.
Do annual tests really benefit individuals?
No doubt they are necessary, but evidence from the independent Cochrane Collaboration that studied more than 2 lac people found no difference in the number of overall deaths or deaths from cancer and heart diseases. They also did not reduce hospital admissions, disability, doctor visits, or time off from work.
What are the possible risks?
The Cochrane review did suggest that annual checkups can lead to health problems. Those who had checkups had higher rates of new diagnoses, including many that would not have caused symptoms or shortened lives.
What should be the new approach?
For those in good health, it means that you do not require all tests all the time year after year. But you should be clinically evaluated thoroughly, get your weight and blood pressure checked, or talk about weight loss, your emotional health or smoking cessation, and your exercises almost every time you see your physician.
