Forget your annual physical exam (redux)

My last physical exam (annual checkup) was in 2003. At that time, the doctor told me my cholesterol was high. Because I don’t care about that and didn’t want to argue with him, I just quit having the exams—to no ill effect. It turns out that I’m in good company. Examples:

• The Society for General Internal Medicine says, "Don’t perform routine general health checks for asymptomatic adults” (people who feel fine).
• Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, oncologist and a vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania, says, “from a health perspective, the annual physical exam is basically worthless.”
• Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, a primary care physician and professor of health policy at Harvard Medical School says, "Patients should really only go to the doctor if something is wrong, or if it's time to have an important preventive test like a colonoscopy.” Plus, he says, annual physicals are a waste of money, costing us about $10 billion a year, which is more than we spend on breast cancer.
• Dr. Michael Rothberg, primary care physician and a health researcher at the Cleveland Clinic, tries to avoid giving physicals. "I generally don't like to frighten people, and I don't like to give them diseases they don't have. If you get near doctors, they'll start to look for things and order tests because that's what doctors do."
• The Cochrane Collaboration, is an international group of medical researchers who review the world’s biomedical research. After examining the records of 182,000 people from 1963 to 1999, they concluded that the annual physicals did not reduce mortality overall or for specific causes of death from cancer or heart disease.
• The United States Preventive Services Task Force — an independent group of experts making evidence-based recommendations about the use of preventive services — does not have a recommendation on routine annual health checkups. The Canadian guidelines have recommended against these exams since 1979.

I wrote a blog about this on January 10^th, 2015. Even if you were reading my blog then (unlikely), you will have forgotten. 

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