General health checks in adults have little or no effect on reducing serious morbidity and mortality
Citation: Krogsbøll LT, Jørgensen KJ, Gøtzsche PC. General health checks in adults for reducing morbidity and mortality from disease. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2019;(1):CD009009
What is this? The COVID-19 pandemic is placing a strain on health services. Existing research on the effects of general health checks might provide useful information for policy makers.
In this Cochrane review, the authors searched for randomised trials of the effects of health checks on illness and deaths. They did not restrict their searches by language of publication and did the most recent search in January 31 2018. They included 17 trials.
What works: Nothing noted.
What doesn’t work: Health checks have little or no effect on total mortality or cancer mortality and were found likely to have little or no effect on cardiovascular mortality.
Health checks had little or no effect on fatal and non-fatal ischaemic heart disease and were found likely to have little or no effect on fatal and non-fatal stroke.
What’s uncertain: Nothing noted.