Some medical tests do more harm than good
Baku, August 29 (AZERTAC). New research shows how some common tests and procedures aren`t just expensive, but can do more harm than good.
Dr. Stephen Smith, Professor emeritus of family medicine at Brown University School of Medicine, tells his physician not to order a PSA blood test for prostate cancer or an annual electrocardiogram to screen for heart irregularities, since neither test has been shown to save lives. Rather, both tests frequently find innocuous quirks that can lead to a dangerous odyssey of tests and procedures. Dr. Rita Redberg, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and editor of the prestigious Archives of Internal Medicine, has no intention of having a screening mammogram even though her 50th birthday has come and gone. That`s the age at which women are advised to get one. But, says Redberg, they detect too many false positives (suspicious spots that turn out, upon biopsy, to be nothing) and tumors that might regress on their own, and there is little if any evidence that they save lives.
These physicians are not anti-medicine. They are not trying to save money on their copayments or deductibles. And they are not trying to rein in the nation`s soaring health-care costs, which at $2.7 trillion account for fully one sixth of every dollar spent in the U.S. They are applying to their personal lives a message they have become increasingly vocal about in their roles as biomedical researchers and doctors: more health care often means worse health.
That less health care can lead to better health and, conversely, that more health care can harm health, runs counter to most patients` conviction that screenings and treatments are inherently beneficial. That belief is fueled by the flood of new technologies and drugs that have reached the market in the past two or three decades, promising to prevent disease and extend life. Most of us wouldn`t think twice if our doctor offered a test that has the power to expose a lurking tumor, or a clogged artery, or a heart arrhythmia. Better to know—and get treated—than to take any risks, the reasoning goes.
In fact, for many otherwise healthy people, tests often lead to more tests, which can lead to interventions based on a possible problem that may have gone away on its own or ultimately proved harmless. Patients can easily be fooled when a screening test detects, or an intervention treats, an abnormality, and their health improves, says cardiologist Michael Lauer of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. In fact, says Lauer, that abnormality may not have been the cause of the problem or a threat to future health: “All you`ve done is misclassify someone with no disease as having disease.”
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