Clipping Board » Medical Myths ─ The truth about healthcare is often different from what you intuitively think.
【Central News Agency, Taipei, July 25, 2012】
When former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney underwent a health check-up in 2005, doctors performed a CT scan on him. The scan revealed two small nodules in his lungs, and doctors recommended surgery. However, complications arose due to pancreatic inflammation.
According to a report by the UK's *Daily Mail*, he spent six weeks in the hospital. Later, due to a cyst that needed removal—a cyst caused by pancreatic inflammation—he was hospitalized again a month later.
If these nodules had been detected earlier and Mulroney's life had been saved, wouldn’t all the surgeries, scans, sick leave, and examinations have been worth it? Here’s the catch: the nodules were not malignant tumors but benign.
In essence, Mulroney underwent surgery for a "problem" that wasn’t actually a problem and suffered the resulting complications.
Dr. Margaret McCartney from the UK remarked, "You might think that, as a family doctor, I would advise people to double-check or diagnose issues early."
However, hundreds of high-end private clinics offer "health check-ups," including various blood tests, ultrasounds, and even MRI and CT scans to give you "peace of mind," with costs ranging from £100 to several thousand pounds.
Some of these tests may be beneficial, but many are not. Some can even be harmful, as was the case with Mulroney.
How can harmless tests become harmful?
One of the issues with screening perfectly healthy people for abnormalities is that very few actually have them.
The key point is that most abnormalities are not harmful to us.
For example, if you perform an MRI on healthy adults, you’ll find that 1.8% have arterial bulges (aneurysms), and 1.6% have meningiomas, a type of brain tumor.
Yet, none of these individuals exhibit symptoms, and most will never develop the conditions revealed by the scans.
Source: http://udn. com/ NEWS/ WORLD/ WOR4/ 7249559. shtml#ixzz21hhqHDDV
Routine Health Checks Do More Harm Than Good
When former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney underwent a health check-up in 2005, doctors performed a CT scan on him. The scan revealed two small nodules in his lungs, and doctors recommended surgery. However, complications arose due to pancreatic inflammation.
According to a report by the UK's *Daily Mail*, he spent six weeks in the hospital. Later, due to a cyst that needed removal—a cyst caused by pancreatic inflammation—he was hospitalized again a month later.
If these nodules had been detected earlier and Mulroney's life had been saved, wouldn’t all the surgeries, scans, sick leave, and examinations have been worth it? Here’s the catch: the nodules were not malignant tumors but benign.
In essence, Mulroney underwent surgery for a "problem" that wasn’t actually a problem and suffered the resulting complications.
Dr. Margaret McCartney from the UK remarked, "You might think that, as a family doctor, I would advise people to double-check or diagnose issues early."
However, hundreds of high-end private clinics offer "health check-ups," including various blood tests, ultrasounds, and even MRI and CT scans to give you "peace of mind," with costs ranging from £100 to several thousand pounds.
Some of these tests may be beneficial, but many are not. Some can even be harmful, as was the case with Mulroney.
How can harmless tests become harmful?
One of the issues with screening perfectly healthy people for abnormalities is that very few actually have them.
The key point is that most abnormalities are not harmful to us.
For example, if you perform an MRI on healthy adults, you’ll find that 1.8% have arterial bulges (aneurysms), and 1.6% have meningiomas, a type of brain tumor.
Yet, none of these individuals exhibit symptoms, and most will never develop the conditions revealed by the scans.
Source: http://udn. com/ NEWS/ WORLD/ WOR4/ 7249559. shtml#ixzz21hhqHDDV