Welcome back to GrampaSaidSo

That’s SCANS by the way, not SCAMS! It may well be that this is a scam but that’s far from certain. However, concern is growing about a company offering private health scans for early detection of various life threatening complaints.

Doctors and other medical experts in the UK are worried that the scans being carried out by Life Line Screening may not be what they’re made out to be and may, in fact, be offering worthless advice that could be tantamount to scare mongering.

It’s thought that about 75,000 people in the UK have paid this US firm up to £150 each for tests for conditions such as heart disease and strokes – often after getting letters from the company suggesting they could be at risk, but according to the body which advises the UK government on screening, the procedures offered by Life Line Screening and other such private companies can be expensive, unnecessary and may even lead to misleading diagnoses.

Life Line Screening insists its procedures identify real risks and points out that NHS tests are only provided after patients have already displayed symptoms. The company offers a package of five tests covering such conditions as strokes, heart disease, aneurysms and osteoporosis and costing about £150.

It says its tests are carried out by technicians using state-of-the-art mobile ultrasound equipment set up in town halls or community centres around the UK.

According to the UK National Screening Committee the NHS already offers tests for osteoporosis, strokes and heart disease and all for free.

Its director of programmes, Anne Mackie, says, “Many, many of these programmes which the companies offer – and for some they offer to a particular age group – we would recommend you don’t because the balance of harm outweighs the benefits…

“You can find on these tests things which – if you hadn’t known – would never have been significant.

“You might end up having tests and examinations – potentially some of them quite unpleasant – that you would not have had, had you not had the screening.”

Several health based charities are also adamant that they do not endorse these screenings. For instance, the National Osteoporosis Society says it doesn’t support ultrasound for diagnosing the disease and the British Heart Foundation reckons there is insufficient evidence that one of the main Life Line Screening tests for detecting the risk of stroke is appropriate in individuals who are not already showing symptoms of the disease.

But Life Line Screening insists early detection of conditions can be life saving and says it is not out to scare people.

Aileen Morrison from the company said: “We don’t intend to frighten anybody with our marketing material at all. What we do do is to provide people with information about the conditions and quite often these are compelling statistics.

“These tests aren’t available on the NHS typically, unless you have symptoms, so what we try to do is identify people with risk factors before any symptoms occur – before a serious event such as aneurysm or a stroke occurs”.

It must be pointed out that there are a lot of very satisfied clients of Life Line Screening both in the US where it all started (see these video testimonials) and here in the UK. My concern though is how many people have undergone these screenings unnecessarily. It smacks of scaremongering to me!

(Picture courtesy of news.bbc.co.uk)

Related posts:

1. Aging Care Has Become The Top Health Care Need Each of us is aging however in today's society, many...
2. What Forms Of Elderly Care Are Available Today Are you currently in a position where it is necessary...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.