A University of Oxford study has found that attending an NHS Health Check is associated with a decreased risk of dying and of diseases, such as dementia, heart attack, kidney disease and liver cirrhosis.
The results, published in BMC Medicine, suggest that preventative programmes such as the NHS Health Check can help to reduce a population’s overall risk of long-term disease.
NHS Health Check is designed to identify people at risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease and help in primary disease prevention. Despite the fact it has been widely implemented, its effectiveness in preventing longer-term disease was unclear.
In this study, the research team, who were supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), measured the rate of new diagnoses in UK Biobank participants who underwent the NHS Health Check compared with those who did not.
The study identified 48,602 UK Biobank participants who had had an NHS Health Check, and these were matched against the same number of equivalent participants who had no record of a check. Follow-up diagnoses for a range of common conditions were ascertained from health records with an average follow-up of nine years.
In the two years immediately following an NHS Health Check, higher diagnosis rates were observed for hypertension, high cholesterol and chronic kidney disease among health check recipients compared to their matched counterparts. However, in the longer term, NHS Health Check recipients had significantly lower risk across all multi-organ disease outcomes and reduced rates of mortality.
The authors said this reduced incidence of disease following the health check could be a result of earlier detection and treatment for key risk factors such as hypertension and high cholesterol, thus altering the longer-term health trajectory.
The findings revealed that participants who attended an NHS Health Check appointment had: a 19 percent lower rate of dementia diagnosis within the follow-up period; a 23% lower rate of acute kidney injury diagnosis; a 44 percent lower rate of liver cirrhosis diagnosis; and an overall 23% lower risk of death from any cause.
The principal author on the paper, Celeste McCracken of the Radcliffe Department of Medicine, said: “This study demonstrates that proactive, well-designed preventive programmes such as the NHS Health Check can be effective in reducing longer-term disease outcomes, across multiple organ systems.
“Our results suggest that the NHS Health Check has a role in preventing long-term diseases through risk factor modification. This study is an important addition to a growing body of evidence supporting the long-term benefits of preventative interventions in reducing longer-term multi-morbidity.”