Before we even consider specific medical screening tests, most doctors will agree that the most important factors for a long and healthy life are lifestyle issues which revolve around the way we choose to live our lives.

These include diet, exercise, smoking, alcohol and stress avoidance/relief.

The NHS offers a number of evidence-based screening programs for all people.

This includes antenatal blood and ultrasound tests, heel prick tests for babies, Chlamydia screening for the under 25s, mammography and cervical smears for women, blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol tests through GP surgeries and Pharmacists and rectal cancer screening for the over 60s.

GPs will also perform a variety of screening tests for patients who appear to be a greater risk due to symptoms or family history and this includes tests for prostate cancer and osteoporosis.

However increasing numbers of ‘worried well’ are paying for more ’comprehensive’ screening tests including large batteries of blood tests and whole body CT imaging, where a large number of X- ray slices are pieced together to give a detailed picture of the body.

These tests can cost many hundreds of pounds and advocates would argue that it is surely a good idea to ‘find early disease before it finds you’.

There is no doubt that such tests can pick up asymptomatic disease at an early stage, which may then allow early treatment or cure- so what is the catch?

Firstly some patients turn to such tests before they have addressed some of the issues mentioned above.

Patients must have clear view about what action they will take if a test reveals an abnormality - for example: Would they be prepared to change their diet if their cholesterol was raised, particularly if they are already over-weight or eating unhealthily?

Would they be prepared to undergo further unpleasant and sometimes potentially risky investigations when the raised PSA or the positive faecal blood test may not prove to be clinically important .

Some of these tests may themselves pose a potential health risk, either directly, or as complications of subsequent investigations.

Whole body CT scans may give a radiation dose 1500x that of a Chest x-ray and it has been suggested that this in itself may cause a 1 in 700 cancer risk.

Whole body imaging may discover all sorts of minor abnormalities and many of these will not be significant.

How do we tell which ones are the important ones, particularly when we are particularly interested in discovering disease at it earliest stages? - This will usually involve follow up tests.

Firstly I am not sure that the NHS will necessarily be able to follow up all of these concerns when the test was performed outside NHS guidelines in the first place and so this may result in significant subsequent private health costs.

Secondarily it is my observation that every patient who has had one of these health screening checks is recommended to have a further check in the future, in order to monitor some of these minor abnormalities. So rather than reassuring these patients, such tests may increase anxiety, cost more money in subsequent tests and subsequently increase your incidental cancer risk.

I, for one, will not be responding to this particular advert.