Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health [Paperback]

A complex web of factors has created the phenomenon of overdiagnosis: the popular media promotes fear of disease and perpetuates the myth that early, aggressive treatment is always best; in an attempt to avoid lawsuits, doctors have begun to leave no test undone, no abnormality overlooked; and profits are being made from screenings, medical procedures, and pharmaceuticals. Revealing the social, medical, and economic ramifications of a health-care system that overdiagnoses and overtreats patients, Dr. H. Gilbert Welch makes a reasoned call for change that would save us pain, worry, and money.

Table of Contents...

Introduction:Our Enthusiasm for Diagnosis

Chapter 1)Genesis: People Become Patients with High Blood Pressure
Chapter 2)We Change the Rules: How Numbers Get Changed to Give You Diabetes, High Cholesterol, and Osteoporosis
Chapter 3)We Are Able to See More: How Scans Give You Gallstones, Damaged Knee Cartilage, Bulging Discs, Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms, and Blood Clots
Chapter 4)We Look Harder for Prostate Cancer: How Screening Made It Clear That Overdiagnosis Exists in Cancer
Chapter 5)We Look Harder for Other Cancers
Chapter 6)We Look Harder for Breast Cancer
Chapter 7)We Stumble onto Incidentalomas That Might Be Cancer
Chapter 8)We Look Harder for Everything Else: How Screening Gives You (and Your Baby) Another Set of Problems
Chapter 9)We Confuse DNA with Disease: How Genetic Testing Will Give You Almost Anything
Chapter 10)Get the Facts
Chapter 11)Get the System
Chapter 12)Get the Big Picture

Conclusion:Pursuing Health with Less Diagnosis

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index“Very insightful and engaging.”—Dennis Rosen,The Boston Globe

“One of the most important books about health care  in the last several years.”—Cato Institute 
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