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Comment & Response
September 23, 2013

General Health Checks in Adults

Author Affiliations
  • 1University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, New York
JAMA Intern Med. 2013;173(17):1657-1658. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.8216

In their review of general health checks, assessing the effectiveness of the overall checkup, Prochazka and Caverly1 note that while general health checks in adults lead to an increase in the diagnosis of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes, multiple reviews have shown that general health checks fail to reduce cardiovascular, cancer, or total mortality and may result in overzealous use of screening tests, overdiagnosis, and possible harm to the patient.

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