Regular Checkups Do More Harm than Good

This important review of fourteen randomized trials of 182,880 people evaluated the benefits and harms of going to your doctor for a general checkup. . . . 

Though the purpose of a checkup is to administer tests to healthy people in order detect disease early and improve health and lifespan, the study found that general checkups do not reduce mortality or risk of illness.

The risk of overall death, death from cancer and death from cardiovascular disease were all unaffected by going for a checkup: risk of overall death went down by 1%, risk of dying from cancer went up by 1% and risk of dying of cardiovascular disease went up by 3%.

Since tests administered during the checkups did detect many abnormalities, but led to no benefit, the authors said that that may indicate that checkups lead to overdiagnosis rather than clinically relevant diagnosis. That leads to the risk of unnecessary, and potentially risky, treatment. Therefore, the authors conclude that the potential for harm is likely to exceed the potential for benefit when screening is carried out on people who are generally healthy, as is the case in regular checkups.

The overall conclusion of the paper is that checkups do not reduce overall mortality nor mortality from cancer or cardiovascular disease and that they are, therefore, unlikely to be beneficial.

This study is not the first to reach this conclusion (Ann Intern Med 2007).

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2012 Oct 17;(10):CD009009