Overtreatment (or overtesting) has been an interest of mine as of late.
There is an interesting article with book review published this week in the Lancet on the perils of excessive medical care. The article cleverly refers to President Barack Obama's recent yearly physical examination. At age 48, he was deemed to be in excellent health. However, he underwent testing not routinely recommended for a 48 year old man by the US Preventive Services Task Force : an electron-beam CT scan of the coronary arteries (to look for heart disease), a three-dimensional CT scan of the large bowel (to look for colon cancer), and a blood test for prostate-specific antigen (to look for early prostate cancer).
The implications are clear: even evidence-based guidelines should be ignored if the patient is important enough, and, more care is better.
