5 Medical Tests You May Not Need

A routine visit to the doctor's office can bring up a laundry list of medical tests, all designed to screen for one serious disease or another. But according to a new report from leading physician groups, a large number of medical tests and procedures billed as routine are largely unnecessary.

For many patients and doctors, it's easy to adopt the notion that if a little screening is good, more of it is better, "just to be sure" nothing is wrong. But that approach is costly, both in terms of health care dollars spent and the potential risks of the screenings.

"There's no medical treatment or test that is 100 percent without risk," said Dr. Christine Cassel, president and chief executive officer of the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation. "Things that you might think are routine actually should not be done because they expose patients to risk."

To help patients parse through the barrage of medical procedures, the ABIM Foundation and Consumer Reports have created the Choosing Wisely project, a campaign that asked nine physician groups to identify five tests or procedures in their fields that are overused or unnecessary.

Cassel said the project is designed to give patients as much information as doctors have about screening, as well as to rein in health care costs.



ABC News' Dr. Amar Narula contributed to this report.