Overdiagnosis of health is harming people, revealed a report being published in the British Medical Journal. The study authors were of the view that often it has been seen that healthy people are prescribed drugs for life due to low-risk diseases.
This habit of prescribing medicines for nowhere cause occurs due to lower thresholds of evidence. There is a great need to change the diagnostic criteria, so that people are not given medicines for such problems, which have not even afflicted them.
Co-author Ray Moynihan, senior research fellow at Bond University in Australia, revealed that overdiagnosis cost the US health and care system about £128billion a year, which is nothing but a sheer wastage.
Roy unveiled that approximately eight million Britons have been taking osteoporosis treatment even when they have been suffering very low risk of bone breakage. Not only this, people have been taking statins even when they do not have any fear of cardiac arrest and 30% of people, who have been diagnosed with asthma, do not suffer from any respiratory problem.
"We are now seeing evidence that this is happening in many conditions, particularly in cancer, and particularly in breast and prostate cancer”, said Ray Moynihan from Bond University.