Unnecessary Screening tests
This piece from the BMJ today also applies just to the U.S.
Patients may be putting themselves at unnecessary risk—with very little benefit to their health—by opting to undergo scans and genetic tests that are offered to them as part of a screening programme by private sector healthcare organisations.
That is the warning of a briefing paper by the BMA's Board of Science, which fears that many people are not told of the potential risks before undergoing the tests, such as whole body magnetic resonance imaging or the prostate specific antigen test for prostate cancer. It is calling on the government to address the growing problem of unregulated screening that is offered outside the formal NHS screening programmes. An estimated £65m ($117m; 95m) was spent in Britain last year on private screening.
Speaking at the launch of the paper, Steven Laitner, a consultant in public health medicine, said unregulated screening was often provided for profit. "It is often marketed to certain sections of the population but not necessarily those suffering from disease. It is not quality assured."
Dr Laitner warned that the tests did not necessarily offer any benefit and could run the risk of harm, which patients were not always made fully aware of. A whole body scan carried the equivalent dose of 100 chest radiographs, he said, and increased the risk of a fatal cancer developing by one in every 2000 patients screened.
He also explained that because the tests could be inconclusive and give false positive results patients often needed further, more invasive tests to estabilish the results' accuracy.