I had a physical the other day and I was left wondering, why? Now don’t get me wrong, there is a piece of mind element and as you cross that magic 40 year old barrier, things start to break and you need to watch a bit more carefully. But after the whole event, I was left wondering if it really did anything.

I have heard the stories of someone who caught something early due to a test, urban myth or not. But one has to wonder, does it really help? When I told my little brother, he went on a tirade about it, complaining that the medical system is burdened by these tests which come out inconclusive, and then lead to a bunch more tests with costs piling up and statistics demonstrating that most of the pre-event testing is a waste of money.

HBR seems to agree. From the article Executive Physicals: Whats the ROI?:

Very few screening tests have been proven to identify diseases before they begin to cause noticeable problems. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention that does tough-minded assessments of health care interventions, recommends that only a handful of them be performed regularly (if not annually). These include checking for unhealthful behaviors such as smoking, alcohol abuse, poor diet, and lack of exercise; monitoring stats such as weight and blood pressure; and testing for cholesterol. Once the doctor finds a problem, he or she may prescribe preventive treatments endorsed by the task force – for instance, low doses of aspirin for adults at increased risk of heart disease or estrogen receptor modulators for women at increased risk of breast cancer. The task force also suggests doing a modest number of imaging tests, such as ultrasounds for abdominal aortic aneurysms in high-risk men (65- to 75-year-olds who have ever smoked), mammograms and bone density tests for women over 65, and colonoscopies for people over 50. It does not call for other imaging tests that are often part of executive physical programs; full-body and coronary artery CT scans are especially not recommended. Indeed, many leading scientific and medical organizations caution against using these scans to screen for disease.

And to support the point of view about leading to additional tests:

Many times the scans are “falsely positive”: They detect suspicious-looking spots that turn out to be benign, raising needless worry and frequently prompting invasive tests. They also can be “falsely negative”: They may find nothing wrong when in fact a disease is present, creating a sense of security that leads the patient to ignore early warning signs. Even if a recent CT scan of an executive’s coronary arteries indicates a low risk of heart disease, she should tell her doctor about the squeezing sensation in her chest and the mild nausea she has started to feel after about 10 minutes on the treadmill. Not doing so could prove fatal.

I am not sure. I left glad to know that I have a ‘good’ physical fitness (but not great) for my age .. it took me 9 minutes and 36 seconds to get my heart rate to 90% of maximum (161). At my age, ‘excellent’ health is 10 minutes or over. Oh yah, and my cholesterol is a tad high …. Such a cliché for my age.