“To the growing numbers of medical experts who preach evidence-based medicine — the discipline that insists on proof that time-honored medical practices and procedures are actually effective — there is no more inviting target than the annual physical.

Checkups for people with no medical complaint remain the single most common reason for visiting a doctor, according to surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…

Yet in a series of reports that began in 1989 and is still continuing, an expert committee sponsored by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services, found little support for many of the tests commonly included in a typical physical exam for symptomless people.

It found no evidence, for example, that routine pelvic, rectal and testicular exams made any difference in overall survival rates for those with no symptoms of illness.

It warned that such tests can lead to false alarms, necessitating a round of expensive and sometimes risky follow-up tests. And even many tests that are useful, like cholesterol and blood pressure checks, need not be done every year, it said in reports to doctors, policy makers and the public.” NY Times

‘Evidence-based’ is ominously synonymous with ‘cost-effective’, of course, and its findings cannot measure intangible mutual benefits of an annual physical such as deepening the rapport between a patient and her/his physician, continuity of care, etc., unless they have a measurable impact on a statistic being studied. There is a branch of medicine which attempts to quantify the value of “quality-of-life” changes from medical interventions, but I doubt their data bearing on the annual physical checkup, if there is any, would be included in this purview.