Do we run too many medical tests on children?
While too much testing can lead to false-positives and over treatment in kids, health tests can also be good motivation for children to adopt healthy habits. In this video, HealthMaker Alan Greene, MD, chief medical officer at Scanadu, explains.
Transcript
Whenever you do a series of 20 tests, if there's a little bit of error in there, you're gonna find a false positive that
could lead to more testing and more overtreatment. [MUSIC PLAYING]
I think the tests will actually become cheaper and easier and more prolific over the years
to come. So the key thing for us to do, probably, is to learn how to put all that data in context.
Because whenever you do a series of 20 tests, if there's a little bit of error in there, you're gonna find a false positive that
could lead to more testing and more overtreatment. So I'm not a fan of that.
I think that, for instance, kids have cholesterol problems. It's one of the areas there's a lot of controversy about testing a lot.
I don't want to see that as a leverage to start a whole lot of kids on statin medications when there's not much evidence that in childhood that's
gonna make a difference for their health. But if it's used to call attention to-- this is something new in our history
that kids have high cholesterol-- we really do need to get active and use that as a motivation to start adopting the practices you kind of wanted
to adopt anyway in your life. I that could be a really valuable use of the technology. [MUSIC PLAYING]
teen health development
Browse videos by topic categories
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
ALL