Do you really need that medical examination?

Make sure that your insurance covers any test that your doctor wants to give you.Unnecessary medical tests are inflating their bills - and it can even be endangered their health. A study of 2006 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that 43% of healthy persons routine controls, doctors ordered an x-ray, electrocardiogram or urinalysis, tests that are not recommended for routine prevention under national guidelines.

"There is no harm in additional tests, such as exposure to radiation," says Daniel Merenstein, MD, director of family medicine at Georgetown University and lead author of the study.

In addition to causing stress, excessive testing can eat funds or insurance coverage. Dr. Merenstein said that in one case recently, a couple had an extensive workup infertility costs thousands of dollars, although had been trying to conceive for only six months. (Medically, infertility is defined as problems to conceive for at least one year).

"In another study, we found that physicians in the Washington area, D.C., were overusing colonoscopies, making them every 5 years instead of every 10 as guidelines recommend," Dr. Merenstein said, referring to the recommended range for people whose colonoscopies do not show any abnormality. Colonoscopies, ranging in cost from $650 for a simple procedure to $2,000 or more if they include biopsies, are important to detect colon cancer, but they carry risks of complications, such as bleeding and bowel.

The idea of doctor tests not always superfluous. Bob Phillips, MD, director of the Robert Graham Center, a research center of D.C.-based policy studies in family medicine and primary care, was a patient of 70-year-old, who asked him to do a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) of Washington, test for prostate cancer. The results were normal, but the man consumed with concern because her father had suffered from the condition. He sought a second opinion from a urologist, who repeated the PSA because of this family history. Although the second PSA showed no cancer risk, the urologist recommended a blind biopsy. Indeed, cancer was found, and the man had his prostate removed, a procedure that left him impotent and incontinent.

"Do at that moment, it came to me very upset about the side effects and asked me, ' did the right thing?'", says Dr. Phillips. "At the age of 70, half of the men will have prostate cancer, but most don't end up dying from it. I felt just terrible for him. "There is a good chance would have lived his life without any ill with cancer effect".

Question why a test is being done
If your doctor orders an MRI, CT scan or other medical tests, say so. "Ask why is requested, what will be later if the results are positive (or negative), and what your risk factors,?" says Dr. Phillips. If the answer is simply "routine investigation", the test may be unnecessary. The physician must have reasons, says.

Some blood tests, such as the complete blood count (CBC), are sometimes made too often. While it is not dangerous, they can add costs, especially if you get them several times. "Do the main thing is, ask your doctor, ' I really need this test?'", says Dr. Merenstein.

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