Overdiagnosed : making people sick in the pursuit of health

Description

Examining the social, medical, and economic ramifications of a health care system that unnecessarily diagnoses and treats patients, Welch makes a reasoned call for change that would save us from countless unneeded surgeries, debilitating anxiety, and exorbitant costs. Abstract: Examining the social, medical, and economic ramifications of a health care system that unnecessarily diagnoses and treats patients, Welch makes a reasoned call for change that would save us from countless unneeded surgeries, debilitating anxiety, and exorbitant costs Content: Our enthusiasm for diagnosis -- Genesis: people become patients with high blood pressure -- We change the rules: how numbers get changed to give you diabetes, high cholesterol, and osteoporosis -- We are able to see more: how scans give you gallstones, damaged knee cartilage, bulging discs, abdominal aortic aneurysms, and blood clots -- We look harder for prostate cancer: how screening made it clear that overdiagnosis exists in cancer -- We look harder for other cancers -- We look harder for breast cancer -- We stumble onto incidentalomas that might be cancer -- We look harder for everything else: how screening gives you (and your baby) another set of problems -- We confuse DNA with disease: how genetic testing will give you almost anything -- Get the facts -- Get the system -- Get the big picture -- Pursuing health with less diagnosis.