Take care of yourself … You are now the first manager of your health check-up

Take care of yourself … You are now the first manager of your health check-up


Even if we feel good, Dr. Good advises to worry each year of his tension and his sugar level which lead to diabetes and hypertension, the two main silent killers. “I take a blood test once a year to control sugar, blood cells, cholesterol, fats and kidney functions. It is essential. And of course, I do not smoke and I play sports, two parameters that avoid 40 % of cancers. Stress in our societies is increasing: eating well and moving it can decrease it. Everyone is their first doctor. Thanks to COVID, many people have finally realized that they should take care of them and that the doctor will not take everyone by the hand, ”poses Michel Cymes. However, this overall roadmap is only applied for reasonable people.

Not cars to revise

Doctor Cymes’ user manual remains general. Periodic check-up, systematically performed, with a very wide and standard test battery (the same for everyone) has not shown its effectiveness to improve your health. “Human beings is not a car which we maintain every 10 or 20,000 kilometers. We are not machines, we are human bodies ”, retorts Cassian Minguet, head of the academic center of general medicine of UClouvain and family doctor still in activity.

Check-ups are mainly used as part of an examination for life insurance, enter an administration, become a firefighter. “The risk of a“ routine ”check-up is to discover things that potentially are not dangerous, small anomalies of life that should not have been taken care of by medicine, but which will generate stress and additional examinations. We experienced thorax scanners and abdomen to everyone to see periodically if we discover something. It was counterproductive. The exams must be justified. Either a risk factor or an anomaly that we discovered in the patient. ”

In fifteen years, the chances of cancer survival have increased from 63 to 68 %

Periodic health examination whose maturity and frequency are decided by the doctor on the basis of risk factors is however essential. The family history of diseases are crucial indicators. If the parents have suffered from cancer or a cardiovascular problem, for example, a close periodic examination is essential.

“Belgian general medicine is a personalized medicine where each patient is special. The periodic examination is very well done and compulsory in small children, with a health book and vaccines. We then lose them in adolescence. Some will only come back to an advanced age, deplores Cassian Minguet. Your general practitioner must be your reference. Specialists do their part. Ophthalmologists are making the health of the eye. They give you appointments every year if you have a problem. Gynecologists and pediatricians, the same. It is very good, but only if there is a person who takes care of screening by ensuring that there are no shortcomings somewhere. ”

Three screenings are however organized directly by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation: uterus, breast and colorectal cancer, for which systematic prevention has proven itself. One in three men will develop cancer before her 75th birthday and one in four women. The increase in survival after a diagnosis of cancer, increased to 68 % of survival against 63 % fifteen years ago, is due to two major factors: progress in research but also early screening. We heal much more often from breast cancer thanks to treatments that have evolved considerably but also thanks to screening that women follow mainly from 50 years.

“Fixed file”, these health homeless

This is not the case with colorectal cancer screening (large intestine), however, systematically sent by post to people over 50 and which takes 3 minutes. The results are available after 7 days at his general practitioner. Taken in time, it is healed in 9 in ten cases. Unfortunately, today is the second cause of death linked to cancer in our country. Almost half of people do not test. The taboo around this cancer explains only part of the problem. The absence of a reference doctor and a global medical file – or a doctor for go – is there for many.

This is the first key to preserving your health: it is essential to have a general practitioner who follows over the very long term by bringing together all the reports, tests and results, including those led by specialists. For this purpose, since 2001, everyone has the opportunity to open a global medical file (DMG) to a general practitioner of their choice. The DMG has been computerized in 2016. Its use has been compulsory since 2021. The patient can since then consult him himself too, which gives him crucial info to “be his first doctor”. If 90 % of Flemish patients have a DMG, 84 % of Walloons have one and only 70 % of Brussels residents. These proportions reported by the IMA atlas (the agency which brings together all the mutuals) have increased but remain too low for French speakers.

“The Belgians are divided between those who have a regular attending physician and the others who do not know who go to see”

“The Belgians are divided between those who have a treating doctor and the others who do not know who go to see. This is why we want 50 % of general practitioners in the population of doctors. The shortage of general practitioners harms care ”, denounces Anne Gillet, vice-president of the Belgian group of omnipractians (GBO), the main union of generalists, but also a doctor on the ground. The numerus clausus was a disaster in the face of the aging of the generalists.

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