What Doctors Don't Tell YouBREAST EXAMINATION: It doesn’t make any difference
Best practice dictates that a patient aged over 50 with long-standing problems of gastric reflux should have an endoscopy - but a recent study has concluded that it’s yet another routine screening programme that has no benefit to the patient.
BUT IS IT SAFE? Routine procedures may not be best procedures
SCREENING: No, it doesn’t save lives
CAESAREANS: Usually unnecessary, and they raise the risk of a stillbi
SCREENING: What takes 10,000 women up to 35 years to achieve?
If you’re a woman, your GP or gynaecologist undoubtedly press-gangs you into having a Pap smear test periodically to screen against cervical cancer.
In these tests, named after Dr George Papanicolaou, who developed it in 1941,
Surgical removal of the appendix, or appendectomy, is the most common operation in the West (BMJ, 2002; 325: 505-6): 6-8 per cent of Britons and North Americans will undergo the operation in their lifetime. Generally considered a safe and standard...
Screening individuals aged 40-49 years for colorectal cancer is unlikely to yield much useful information, according to a new report.
Since the middle of the 18th century, when episiotomy was first introduced, the practice of artificially widening the vaginal opening by cutting into the perineum (the skin and tissue lying between the vulva and the anus) has become more and more...
