Routine health check don’t save lives – experts

A UK programme of giving middle-aged people health MOTs was cast into doubt today by a major global study.

Programmes of health checks fail to reduce deaths or rates of cancer and heart disease, according to experts at the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Denmark.

The researchers analyse some 14 studies of health checks involving more than 180,000 people.

They show that health checks lead to increase rates of diagnosis for high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

But in the long run there was no difference in death rates between people who were invited to screening and those who were not, they say.

The researchers say doctors and policy-makers should "resist" programmes of general health checks.

Instead efforts should be made to find ways of targeting conditions such as kidney disease and diabetes, they say. And studies should make more efforts to measure any harmful effects from health checks.

According to researcher Lasse Krogsbøll, of the Copenhagen-based centre, one problem may be that those at most risk fail to attend for their checks.

He said: "From the evidence we’ve seen, inviting patients to general health checks is unlikely to be beneficial.

"One reason for this might be that doctors identify additional problems and take action when they see patients for other reasons.

"What we’re not saying is that doctors should stop carrying out tests or offering treatment when they suspect there may be a problem. But we do think that public healthcare initiatives that are systematically offering general health checks should be resisted."

Krogsbøll LT, Jørgensen KJ, Grønhøj Larsen C, Gøtzsche PC. General health checks in adults for reducing morbidity and mortality from disease. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2012, Issue 10. Art. No.: CD009009. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD009009.pub2.