Brain screening tests 'may do more harm than good'

More and more healthy people are paying for so-called "health MOTs" that include brain scans.

Now a new study - the biggest ever done into brain scanning results - concludes that these might be doing more harm than good.

The report looked at the results of over 200,000 such scans, performed on healthy people as part of a private health check or as part of volunteer medical research. None of them had symptoms suggesting they had an underlying brain condition.

Almost 3% of these showed some form of abnormality on a MRI brain scan. But researchers say that in most cases there is no clear evidence that treatment would do more good than harm.

This lack of evidence can create anxiety, with many patients feeling that a tough choice has to be made between risky, potentially unnecessary surgery or leaving their condition untreated.

Dr Rustam Al-Shahi Salman, an MRC clinician scientist at the University of Edinburgh, said: "The difficulty with these health check-ups is that in the small number of people who do harbour some undiagnosed brain condition, there is not a clear next step."

"We do not have enough medical evidence to know whether we should treat the abnormalities or just leave them be. Until we have that knowledge, we cannot be sure that commercial screening benefits people with incidental findings on their brain scan. Furthermore, there is little evidence that "peace of mind" lasts for the people with normal brain scans."

The results of the study were published in the British Medical Journal.

This article was published on Fri 4 September 2009