Letters
Interventions in OXCHECK study waste resources
EDITOR,--The OXCHECK study showed significant reductions in total cholesterol concentration (3.1%) and blood pressure (2.5/1.5 mm Hg) with health checks over three years.1 The reductions in cholesterol concentration are in line with responses shown in previous controlled trials.2 The authors seem in some doubt about whether these effects are large enough to justify the cost of the health checks. This may be clearer when the projected benefits are considered in absolute rather than relative terms.
When the Framingham parametric model is used to estimate risk3 with the mean blood pressure and mean total cholesterol concentration in the OXCHECK study, assuming a mean age of 50 and with weighting for the proportion of smokers, the risk of coronary death in the control group is about 0.075% a year in non-diabetic men without electrocardiographic evidence of left ventricular hypertrophy. In the intervention group the estimated rate of coronary death is lowered to
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
StumbleUpon 
Technorati What's this?
Relevant Article
-
Effectiveness of health checks conducted by nurses in primary care: final results of the OXCHECK study
BMJ 1995 310: 1099-1104.[Abstract] [Full Text]
This Article
- Full text
- Respond to this article
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when responses are posted
- Alert me when a correction is posted
Services
- Email this article to a friend
- Find similar articles in BMJ
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Related Content
-
Drugs: cardiovascular system
-
Hypertension
-
Pacing and electrophysiology
-
Health education
-
Health promotion
- Relevant Article
- Find this article in its weekly table of contents
Bookmark with
What's new
Latest blogs
Find BMJ on:
Services
Tools
Online poll
Resources
Rapid responses for this article
There are no rapid responses for this article. Print issues
