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A comment on Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially (2015). Parent comment

Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by mhb on Friday March 02, 2018 @10:35AM (#16502254)
Shouldn't a distinction be made between asserting this for a population vs. for an individual? Yes, for a population it results in overdiagnosis and over treatment. As a personal decision, though, I understand this and will choose how to proceed with that in mind.
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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by emiliobumachar on Friday March 02, 2018 @11:46AM (#16503123)
It's bad for the individual too. Many checks have non-trivial rates of false positives, many treatments have non-trivial rates of severe complication.

Checking occasionally for something specific that's reasonably suspected due to symptoms is good. If you're always checking for everything, you have a high risk of finding something you don't actually have. It turns out that that risk overrides the beneficial chance of finding something real before it has any symptoms.

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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by BeetleB on Friday March 02, 2018 @11:12AM (#16502713)
>Shouldn't a distinction be made between asserting this for a population vs. for an individual? Yes, for a population it results in overdiagnosis and over treatment.

We get overdiagnosis and overtreatment of the population precisely because it is done at an individual level.

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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by skybrian on Friday March 02, 2018 @11:38AM (#16503028)
It seems possible to do better than average here? Just from reading this article, we learn about some "cancer" that is less scary than it sounds and unlikely to cause a problem.

I would be more skeptical if there were a study showing overtreatment still happens in a population informed and wary of overtreatment.

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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by mhb on Friday March 02, 2018 @11:18AM (#16502775)
Right, micromotives. But what's best for me, personally, may be different than what is best for a whole population.
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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by astura on Friday March 02, 2018 @11:26AM (#16502861)
Medicine is individualized. If you have certain risk factors you may benefit from a particular screening tests or even prophylactic treatment and procedures. These should be evidence based too, however. Same when you're having symptoms.

The topic at hand is, as stated up-thread, "full body MRI scans for healthy people."

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