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The periodic health exam or checkup is a time-honored medical tradition that generally is received positively by patients, is eligible for reimbursement and encouraged by some insurance plans, and intuitively seems to be beneficial for delivering recommended preventive services. In this systematic review, researchers identified 19 randomized trials and 13 observational studies in which the benefits of routine checkups in primary care were assessed; most of the studies were conducted in Europe and the U.S. A meta-analysis could not be conducted because of the high level of heterogeneity across the studies.
The review showed minimal to no benefit in preventing early mortality, even though it included data from a large study of all-cause mortal…