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Medical Scribblings - February 18 / 2002

‘Prevention is better than Cure’, ‘A stitch in time saves nine’, etc, etc, it seems on the face of it a very sensible idea and particularly important in relation to your health.

There are some areas that are well worthwhile like checking your blood pressure and urine but others are really quite contentious. For instance the Government recently told all us middle-aged men that we should have a blood test (PSA) to screen for Prostatic cancer. The evidence does not stack up for this at the moment. That is not to say that in the future there may not be a test but at the present we do not have any clear way of identifying this disease in the early stages nor do we have a straightforward way of treating it.

The problem with screening programmes that do not work, is that they can cost lots of money which is then diverted from areas that are effective, it confuses issues in peoples minds and most importantly it causes a great deal of anxiety and distress to no good purpose.

I don’t want you to get the idea that I am against all screening programmes because some things really pay big dividends. Some years ago we started to check Thyroid levels in all our elderly patients and managed to identify a number of patients who greatly benefited from just taking a tablet every day. It was cheap, simple and transformed several people’s lives. A great success!

Our job as GPs is to put some of these things into context for your and to give you sensible advice. We hope it helps?

John Schofield