Transcripts

Dr. John Corso, M.D.:
My recommendation is that people, first of all have to take charge of the preventive health care in their lives by themselves. Unfortunately I believe that our medical system is really good at mopping up after a disease but it does not do prevention very well.

Internist Dr. John Corso, author of the book Stupid Reasons People Die, says if we would just screen for medical problems early it would save a lot of lives. For example…

Screening for aortic aneurysm: the famous actor George C. Scott dropped dead at age seventy-one of a ruptured aneurysm. And aortic aneurysm is the dilation of the largest blood vessel in the body, the aorta - it goes unnoticed and then it suddenly ruptures. This tends to happen mostly in men, and mostly men who have smoked at some point in their life. But there's no warning, you suddenly die - and yet this disease could be discovered with a hundred dollar ultra-sound test. There's no pain, there's no radiation and these aneurysms are completely fixable.

Everyone, says Dr. Corso, should get a colonoscopy by age fifty and if you're reluctant to get one remember…

Colonoscopy is probably the perfect screening test. Aside from the fact that it's embarrassing, it will find a problem about a hundred percent of the time and it won't really scare you about there being a problem when there isn't one - it's very, very accurate. And to find a colon cancer five years before it's deadly is really quite an accomplishment.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.