Many medical tests are overused and overtreatment is common and potentially harmful.
Overtreatment, may refer to unnecessary medical interventions, including treatment of a self-limited condition ((overdiagnosis)) or to extensive treatment for a condition that requires only limited treatment.
Unnecessary healthcare subjects patients to care that does help them, and is rooted in outmoded habits, supply-driven behaviors, and ignores science.
It is linked with overmedicalization.
Incidentalomas, or incidentally found asymptomatic tumors, are present in 22-38 percent of common magnetic resonance imaging or computed tomography studies.
Mammographies are conducted in 9 percent of women with stage IV cancer.
Low risk patients face greater harm when they undergo screening for computed tomography lung cancer, but stable benefit.
Procalcitonin, a peptide that suggests inflammation due to bacterial infection or tissue injury, does not affect antibiotic duration in patients with lower respiratory tract infection.
Urgent care clinics overprescribe antibiotics: 39 percent of all visits, patients received antibiotics.
The treatment of subclinical hypothyroidism, or early mild hypothyroidism, has no effect on clinical outcomes.
Arthroscopic surgery for knee osteoarthritis was shown in a sham controlled randomized trial that this procedure conferred no benefit over placebo.
Opioids for chronic noncancer pain-meta-analysis found no clinically significant benefit.
The use of supplemental oxygen for patients with normal oxygen levels is questionable.
The use of stress ulcer prophylaxis for intensive care unit patients to prevent stress-related mucosal bleeding from the upper gastrointestinal tract is questionable.
In many cases physicians are motivated to order unnecessary tests and treatments due to financial incentives offered by pharmaceutical companies or fee-for-service procedures or other health insurance metrics.