Published: October 16, 2012
Reviewed by Dori F. Zaleznik, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston and Dorothy Caputo, MA, BSN, RN, Nurse Planner
Patients who had regular general health checkups died of cardiovascular disease and cancer at virtually the same rate as those who did not have checkups, results of a systematic review and meta-analysis showed.
Analysis of 16 clinical trials involving 183,000 patients yielded mortality risk ratios of 1.01 and 1.03 for people who had general checkups versus those who did not, according to Lasse T. Krogsboll, of the Cochrane Nordic Center in Copenhagen, and co-authors.
Nor did the data show any effect of checkups on key secondary endpoints, including hospital admission, disability, physician visits, or absenteeism from work, they reported online in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
Some of the studies did show increased diagnosis of hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and certain chronic diseases.
"General health checks did not reduce morbidity or mortality, neither overall nor for cardiovascular or cancer causes, although the number of new diagnoses was increased," the authors wrote in conclusion.
"With the large number of participants and deaths included, the long follow-up periods used, and considering that cardiovascular and cancer mortality were not reduced, general health checks are unlikely to be beneficial," they added.
General health checkups have long been recommended as a component of routine healthcare. Multiple studies have shown that diagnoses of serious conditions often occur incidentally, during totally unrelated exams, such as general health checkups.
Routine checkups often involve screening tests, many of which have not been evaluated in high-quality studies, the authors wrote in the introduction to their findings.
Even tests that have been thoroughly evaluated have faced increased scrutiny, such as screening mammography for women younger than 50 and screening prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests for prostate cancer. In recent years, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has recommended against broad application of either test in the general population.
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