Posted on 12/26/2004 6:21:10 AM PST by shrinkermd
It sounded like a pretty good deal to Ken Doerflinger: a government study offering to examine him from head to toe for signs of cancer.
But those free tests wound up costing a lot. The results, which turned out to be a "false positive," led Mr. Doerflinger, 75, of suburban Detroit, to undergo thousands of dollars of tests just to prove that he did not have cancer after all.
A new study found that people spent an extra $1,000 or so on health care in the year after a test raised suspicions that later proved unfounded. "The key here is to make sure that people are considering all the possible benefits and harms" when they go for a screening test, especially one not recommended by health officials, said Jennifer Elston Lafata, director of the Center for Health Services Research at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit. Ms. Lafata led the study, which was published in this month's issue of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Some experts disagreed with how the study classified costs for "false positive" sigmoidoscopies, which examine the lower part of the colon. The follow-up colonoscopies "really return a dividend" because precancerous polyps are removed during the procedure, said Robert Smith, director of screening for the American Cancer Society.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
False positives don't kill. False negatives do.
Ask for a colonoscopy as a screening test -- insurance pays for it, so why bother with the other tests.
My wife had a colonoscopy at age 49 as a screening test, and they found and removed 6 non-cancerous polyps. Insurance pays most of the cost. Colon cancer starts in a polyp, so if you get them removed you will probably never get the disease.
Everyone should have a colonoscopy as a screening test for colon cancer by age 50.
The guy in the article was in his 70's and ended up getting a colonoscopy to rule out cancer, so what's his beef? He should have gotten one years ago.
Cancer is big business. Millions are spent on cancer research and cancer treatments. Does this have anything to do with not finding a cure?
Amazing how many of our elderly relatives lived into their nineties and practically never had tests of any kind.
Is there any evidence that those people still working into their 70s and 80's and living into their 90s and 100s saw doctors more often than the general population? From personal observation I would say they visited doctors quite a bit less often than those who died much younger.
I don't know. My elderly relatives didn't start running to doctors until they were in their 70s, but many of them lived into their 90s. Not claiming that's in any way "scientific," of course.
People who think modern medicine is a conspiratorial ripoff can save all of us taxpayers a lot of money if they never go to a doc or hospital.
Yes --- I think it would be interesting to see actual numbers on that --- how many of those who live very long frequented doctors and hospitals versus how many didn't. From what I've seen people who go to the doctor very often are not healthier than those who never or almost never do.
And also those who don't believe in socialized medicine --- so don't believe taxpayers should have to be paying in the first place for all this.
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