Hyderabad: Annual health checks or executive check-ups do not require vitamin D, B12, thyroid stimulating hormone and other tests for a normal healthy individual. But senior doctors say that people are going overboard with these tests.
Thyroid stimulating hormone, electrolytes, pulmonary function tests, liver tests and some 35 other tests are not advisable for all.
A senior doctor said, “Health checks are also leading to over-diagnosis and over-treatment due to false positive results. When there are elevated levels of hormones or blood components, patients are advised to stay in the hospital. This increases hospital admissions but is actually not a case of a ‘sick patient’.”
Dr Sanjay Nagral, senior liver surgeon and editor of Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, told this correspondent: “Evidence has been around for a long time that health checks don’t impact health. Leave aside the fact that they contribute to picking up diseases. Health checks only bring about incidental detection which leads to a huge battery of investigations.”
Senior general physician Dr C. Muthaya said, “We usually advise only a blood profile where all the symptoms can be diagnosed. If the patient has a family history of diseases only then tests for those specific parameters or organs are suggested. But a normal healthy person does not need to get tested for all diseases.”
