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medpundit |
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Wednesday, March 26, 2003The Kansas City Star reported this month that the military was conducting neither physical or mental examinations, nor blood sampling, as Congress required. "What's so difficult about all of this?" asked Rep. William Janklow, a South Dakota Republican. "We're talking about elementary data? What is so mysterious about giving everyone a physical exam?" Well, I can think of a few difficulties. How do you centrifuge and store blood samples in the field? Where do you send the samples for testing? What kind of tests would you run? Is it wise to take resources away from treating the wounded to do screening exams of limited value? Evidently, the military has some of the same reservations: Throughout most of the hearing, Winkenwerder insisted the Pentagon was doing the appropriate amount of medical testing. Winkenwerder said the questionnaire would provide a baseline for medical information about the troops. Certain answers could trigger more detailed questions, he said, adding that "hands-on" physical examinations provided limited value. He said that the blood samples from the troops were part of the military's standard test for HIV, and that samples older than a year would not be used. "We feel we are following the law and doing it in a way that makes sense," Winkenwerder said. This idea that a physical exam can find any and all lurking diseases is highly over-rated. Physicals are extremely limited in their ability to find problems, unless there’s something very obvious going on. There are very few silent diseases that can be effectively screened for with blood tests - such as diabetes. There are a few silent cancers, such as colon cancer and cervical cancer, that can be found easily with exams and screening tests, but physical exams wouldn’t do much to find those “mystery illnesses” such as Gulf War Syndrome that consist largely of subjective complaints. posted by Sydney on 3/26/2003 10:09:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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