Nowadays, people are paying more and more attention to health, more and more people are willing to pay out of their own pockets, every year to give themselves a comprehensive physical examination from head to toe. So, all kinds of screening that must be arranged.
But when we went to the health check center, a wide variety of physical examination projects, a wide range, to do, less than a few thousand, more than tens of thousands, really necessary?
In fact, some of the checkups recommended by the medical institutions, it is really not necessary to do all, the name is very bluff, in fact, spend a lot of money!
1. A drop of blood to find out dozens of cancers
"99.99% accuracy of genetic testing, a drop of blood to find out dozens of cancers, can be found more than 1,000 kinds of hereditary diseases ...... "
This "a drop of blood to detect dozens of cancers" check by many medical institutions, physical examination centers packaged as advanced detection technology gene sequencing project. 2014 by the former State Food and Drug Administration, the former National Health and Planning Commission jointly called a halt, the reason is that the domestic use of gene sequencers, and related reagents, software.
Chen Yuhui, deputy director of the Health Management Center at the former 95th Clinical Department of the PLA Joint Logistics Support Force (JLSSF), said that gene sequencing has been abused by many medical examiners to exaggerate the effectiveness of their tests and claimed that as long as a single drop of blood is used to genetically screen the risk of suffering from hundreds of diseases, the cost of which can be from hundreds of thousands of dollars to thousands of dollars.
In fact, gene sequencing is mainly for genetic disease screening, and if you add gene sequencing to your regular medical checkups, it's even more likely that you'll be fooled. On the contrary, some unscrupulous organizations misuse this technology, but it is easy to lead to errors in the genetic test results, or to come up with a wrong diagnosis to the patient caused by panic.
2. "Forecolor" to check for prostate cancer
Many medical checkups have an abdominal ultrasound, and men over 40 tend to add an extra one called "Forecolor" to their checkups, which is an ultrasound of the prostate gland. If you add this test, the cost of the physical examination rises steeply.
Zhang Guangyin, chief physician of the Department of Urology at Beijing Tongren Hospital, pointed out that prostate ultrasound is indeed often used to check for prostate cancer, but for healthy people, the most important thing is to screen for early-stage cancers, and ultrasound can't detect early prostate cancer at all, and it doesn't even have a diagnostic role!
Dr. Zhang Guangyin suggests that men over the age of 50 use the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) program to screen for prostate cancer. Because PSA is much more inexpensive and excludes the problem of false positives, it is the most convenient and sensitive method for early screening specific for prostate cancer.
3. Lung cancer screening with X-ray
In most medical checkup packages, the most direct means of checking for lung cancer is the X-ray, and even some medical checkup centers will let you add another X-ray separately to screen for lung cancer.
Yang Yufei, Chief Physician of Oncology Department, Xiyuan Hospital, China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, introduced that X-ray film to detect lung cancer, due to its low resolution, the detection rate is relatively low, and if you can diagnose lung cancer with a chest X-ray film, the clinic is often already in the late stage, and the significance of early screening is not significant.
Dr. Yang Yufei suggested that CT can be used to detect lung cancer due to its high resolution, and lung cancer tumors can be detected at 1 cm or even 0.8 cm.
4. Children's blood calcium test
When blood is drawn to measure micronutrients, many medical checkup centers allow parents to add a "blood calcium test" for their children. Parents may think that if the blood calcium is normal, the child is not deficient in calcium.
Qin Jiong, director of pediatrics at Peking University People's Hospital, introduced that blood calcium is not a comprehensive indication of the amount of calcium in the body. Because, early calcium deficiency, the serum calcium concentration is not enough, in order to prevent the occurrence of low-calcium convulsions, the bones will contribute their own calcium to the blood, the blood calcium concentration is normal, in fact, the child's body bones have been deficient in calcium.
Qin Jiong suggests that the first look at the child has no obvious symptoms of calcium deficiency, such as sweating, excitement, lack of sleep. Blood tests should refer to the blood calcium, blood phosphorus and alkaline phosphatase values **** the same judgment, rather than just blood calcium, or through the irradiation of wrist bone X-ray, to see the age of the bone to determine whether the lack of calcium.
5. CT, infrared check for breast cancer
Women's physical examination, routine breast examination that must be done, but do a breast ultrasound or breast molybdenum target examination is enough, many physical examination centers recommended "CT, infrared breast cancer examination". It's really not necessary to do.
Wan Donggui, chief physician of Chinese and Western medicine oncology at China-Japanese Friendship Hospital, pointed out that when CT is used for breast cancer detection, there is a disadvantage of not having a high sensitivity and not having a strong specificity for the breast. In addition, there are some places will use infrared detection of breast, this is also very not recommended, because infrared detection is not in accordance with international standards, the performance of the machine is poor, low sensitivity, error, and the doctor's subjective judgment, now the big hospitals have not been used to do this method of detection.
Wan Donggui reminded that for early screening of breast cancer, it is first recommended to self-touch self-examination, ultrasound, or through the mammogram to determine. Compared to breast CT, MRI is significantly better and is recommended in high-risk groups.
6. Laboratory indicators for stomach cancer
"Do a laboratory indicator test for stomach cancer?" Many physical examination organizations will recommend you to do this program, but in fact, it can not be detected at all.
Wu Yongdong, chief physician of gastroenterology at Beijing Friendship Hospital, explained that laboratory test indicators for the initial screening of gastric diseases are fine, but if you use them to screen for gastric cancer, they're a bit of a stretch because they don't meet the requirements in terms of accuracy.
Gastroscopy is the most standardized, accurate, and preferred choice for screening and diagnosing gastric cancer.
7. Screening for cancer with PET-CT
"One test to see lesions all over your body" is often the tagline used by medical checkups when recommending PET-CT.
PET-CT can be said to be one of the most high-end medical imaging diagnostic equipment in the world, and it is of great significance for cancer staging, identification of metastatic recurrence, tumor prognosis assessment, and guidance on treatment options. However, it is not cost-effective in routine medical checkups and is not suitable for general medical checkups.
Zhu Xiaoli, chief physician of respiratory medicine at Zhongda Hospital affiliated with Southeast University, pointed out that blind, excessive PET-CT physical examination is not necessary for ordinary people, although PET-CT is a sensitive method of detecting tumors, but the cost is high, and the chest X-ray is often difficult to sensitively find traces of smaller lung nodules. The best screening tool is the low-dose spiral CT, although it can not determine the tumor benign or malignant, but can be used as a means of screening, high-risk groups need to be more annual physical examination.
It's a good thing that you know that you're going to be able to get a good look at this, because it's a good thing that you're going to be able to get a good look at this!