Posted on 06/06/2006 11:55:58 AM PDT by JZelle
It has been Dr. Elmer Huerta's dream to have a clinic bearing a sign that says: "Only for people without symptoms." As the director of the Cancer Preventorium at the Washington Hospital Center's Washington Cancer Institute, he encourages people to go for a checkup before they become sick. When he worked as an oncologist, he became frustrated when he realized how many of his patients' conditions could have been prevented. "If you intervene early and find conditions earlier, then you provide better quality of life," Dr. Huerta says. "You give more years to people, and you save a lot of money." Prevention is the key to saving many lives. Getting a yearly physical exam and knowing family history of disease can greatly increase people's health and might even save their lives.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Good advice, everyone should be popping Lipitor, save you from the hospital--which is the last place anyone wants to be.
I do.
I pop Zocor.
My dad just had a quadruple bypass, and his brother had a heart attack.
Luckily for my dad, his blockage was caught on a screening, saving him from a heart attack.
His brother made him go!
absolutely!
my internist's favorite saying is...
"i want to see you when you're not sick, too!"
Even people without high cholesterol?
Crestor (or Lipitor) has NOT been shown to reduce to the incidence of heart disease or heart attacks.
Often you can improve a weakness in your health with a simple lifestyle adjustment.
E. Pluribus et al......
Not taking a statin is bad advice if you have diabetes:
London — June 13, 2003 — Most adults with diabetes should be taking statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs see below) even if they have normal cholesterol levels and no evidence of heart disease, a major new study has concluded. The study found that statin drugs cut the risk of heart attacks, strokes and the need for angioplasty or bypass surgery in people with diabetes by one-third. Experts say the findings, published in The Lancet, demand a change in current recommendations, which do not advise statin therapy unless cholesterol levels are elevated.
From the article:
Findings
Both among the participants who presented with diabetes and among those who did not, there were highly significant reductions of about a quarter in the first event rate for major coronary events, for strokes, and for revascularisations. For the first occurrence of any of these major vascular events among participants with diabetes, there was a definite 22% (95% CI 13-30) reduction in the event rate (601 [20·2%] simvastatin-allocated vs 748 [25·1%] placebo-allocated, p<0·0001), which was similar to that among the other high-risk individuals studied. There were also highly significant reductions of 33% (95% CI 17-46, p=0·0003) among the 2912 diabetic participants who did not have any diagnosed occlusive arterial disease at entry, and of 27% (95% CI 13-40, p=0·0007) among the 2426 diabetic participants whose pretreatment LDL cholesterol concentration was below 3·0 mmol/L (116 mg/dL). The proportional reduction in risk was also about a quarter among various other subcategories of diabetic patient studied, including: those with different duration, type, or control of diabetes; those aged over 65 years at entry or with hypertension; and those with total cholesterol below 5·0 mmol/L (193 mg/dL). In addition, among participants who had a first major vascular event following randomisation, allocation to simvastatin reduced the rate of subsequent events during the scheduled treatment period.
Interpretation
The present study provides direct evidence that cholesterol-lowering therapy is beneficial for people with diabetes even if they do not already have manifest coronary disease or high cholesterol concentrations. Allocation to 40 mg simvastatin daily reduced the rate of first major vascular events by about a quarter in a wide range of diabetic patients studied. After making allowance for non-compliance, actual use of this statin regimen would probably reduce these rates by about a third. For example, among the type of diabetic patient studied without occlusive arterial disease, 5 years of treatment would be expected to prevent about 45 people per 1000 from having at least one major vascular event (and, among these 45 people, to prevent about 70 first or subsequent events during this treatment period). Statin therapy should now be considered routinely for all diabetic patients at sufficiently high risk of major vascular events, irrespective of their initial cholesterol concentrations.
Reference: Lancet 2003; 361: 2005-16
Screw it. They might tell me something I don't want to hear.
Glaring ommission - most insurance companies only pay for visits with diagnoses. Diagnoses = illness. Preventive checkups are mostly not covered by insurance unless the doctor finds something wrong.
Whatever you do, don't take any responsibility yourself!
You mean pay out of pocket? I do.
But that's not the point. The article is about the worthiness of detecting illness early in minimizing the injury. The health insurance industry is dollar wise pound foolish.
Our entire health system is awry. We spend the bulk of our health dollars on the last stage of life to buy a scant number of days deferring the inevitable at great cost. A very few dollars might prevent illness in its inception. But it is deemed worthier to spend our limited fungible dollars on the heroic but futile.
That's why I support the concept of health savings accounts where a person can be in charge of their own medical spending again.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.