Transcripts

Dr. John Corso, M.D.:
But in fact it isn't - that annual physical, by and large, is limited to what insurance will pay for and to what tests the doctors usually do.

Internist Dr. John Corso, author of the book Stupid Reasons People Die…

And unfortunately there's about a decade lag between what's available technologically to really save lives, and what is actually offered to people at their annual physical.

For example, checking for heart disease…

Most people think that if they get their blood pressure measured and they check their cholesterol and they don't smoke - that they are doing everything possible to prevent a heart attack. And unfortunately that is very untrue; there is a device that's been around for over twenty years called a high speed CAT scan of the heart. And it'll give a person a picture of their heart and that will predict who's going to have a heart attack about a hundred times better than the cholesterol. But most people don't even know about it and insurance never pays for it.

And that same test can also check for lung cancer.

Lung cancer is the king of all cancers - it kills more Americans than all the other cancers combined. However this last November, a study came out that showed people getting the same high-speed, high resolution CAT scan of their chest - when lung cancer was discovered in these people, eighty percent or more of them were alive after eight years. This is compared to five percent of people being alive who didn't get the scan.

Tomorrow, more preventative health measures that could save your life - I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.