Annual exams, panels with dozens of markers, and imaging procedures performed even without symptoms tend to give patients a sense of security. The idea of looking for any changes before they become a problem seems logical at first glance.
However, in medicine, doing more doesn't always mean preventing better. Prevention depends on factors such as age, family history, habits, health conditions, and exposure to specific risks. Outside this context, a test may identify changes without clinical importance, produce false-positive results, and lead to further investigations that may not have been necessary.
Roberto Rangel, a Family and Community Medicine physician, professor, and public health manager, explains that preventive medicine should not be understood as a fixed list of tests. According to him, the logic of prevention is not to look for everything in everyone, but rather to identify what needs to be evaluated at each stage of life and according to each patient's risk.
