“We check our cars regularly, so why wouldn't we also check our bodies to detect and treat abnormalities before they cause too much damage?” The question was asked by a group of Danish researchers in an editorial published in 2014 in The BMJ under a clarifying title: General medical checkups don't work. They answered themselves: “It seems very easy, but the human body is not a car and, unlike it, it has self-healing properties.” They warned, at the same time, that this type of recognition, which is carried out on people who do not feel sick and may include diagnostic tests, "will cause harm to some." But they went further and prepared a systematic review in 2019 for the renowned Cochrane Collaboration. After analyzing 17 clinical trials involving 230,000 people and comparing adults in the general public who underwent screening with those who did not, they found that general screening had “little or no effect” on the risk of death from any cause or from cancer. , cardiovascular diseases, heart disease and stroke. Although it may seem counterintuitive, “systematically offering medical checkups is unlikely to be beneficial and may lead to unnecessary tests and treatments,” the experts concluded.
