Proactive body scans (a bad idea)

Reading: Full-body scans to look for hidden disease are a bad idea – here’s why, Adam Taylor, The Conversation, 27 August 2024.

If I had the money to spend on one of these, I’d spend it on a holiday, which would be far better for my health.

They:

• produce false positives, sometimes of low resolution, which then need follow-up for confirmation in the health system; and
• rarely find anything serious.

You could argue that even a rare chance of something is worth knowing about, if you can do something about it and you can afford the test. But that’s sales psychology at work.

It would be better to understand risk and screen. More like an regular car service. And that sounds like an NHS Health Check.