Health checks: no convincing evidence in favour exists, argue academic GPs

NHS health checks are unlikely to be cost effective, can expose patients to unnecessary interventions, and risk overdiagnosis, concludes the UK Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine.1

The review, carried out by two academic GPs from the University of Oxford, looked at existing evidence on general health checks, including a recent Cochrane review,2 which it said showed that such checks had no significant effect on mortality or cardiovascular outcomes.

In England the NHS Health Checks scheme …