Prevention alarm: 63% of Italians do not do it (and the pandemic has nothing to do with it)

Bad news. The 63% of Italians tends to avoid medical visits and follow-up analyzes. A bad habit, put back in black and white byUniSalute Health Observatory in a survey carried out with Nextplora precisely to investigate the practices of Italians when it comes to health and above all prevention.

In the last 12 months almost one in five Italians (18%) has never referred to their GP while one in three (31%) did not have routine blood tests. Unfortunately, these are rather consolidated trends, certainly not a novelty linked to the pandemic in progress which obviously can only have worsened the picture, increasing fears and mistrust. Among other things, prevention is not only underestimated in its most generic forms but also when it comes to more specific and therefore obviously even more urgent and delicate controls: 47% of Italians during 2020 did not undergo any specialist examination, such as ultrasound scans or pap smears, while two in five respondents (40%) did not have specialist visits such as to go to a dermatologist or an ophthalmologist. To these is added a 32% who declare that they have never gone to the dentist in the last 12 months.

In this context, it is surprising to discover that even women, usually more attentive to health issues, have adopted worrying behaviors: only half of the Italians over thirty underwent a gynecological examination during 2020. The point, explains the survey, is that “these data do not seem linked to the Covid epidemic and therefore to a desire to avoid health facilities in this period”. A more in-depth analysis has in fact revealed a low predisposition to prevention of Italians in a general sense. A twofold problem: personal, of course, but also of perspective, because it ends up weighing on the health system when certain conditions or pathologies risk having already reached a level of medium or high severity that deserves more invasive and expensive treatments.

The data is truly alarming. Suffice it to say that 15% of Italians have never carried out a simple but important exam such as the electrocardiogram. Even, 42% of respondents said they had never had an ultrasound of the abdomen, 41% of men in our country never had a PSA blood test (which is used to detect the first signs of an enlarged prostate and disease, including cancer) as well as one in three Italians (34%) has never undergone a mammogram (here all the information on when to do it and why it is important).

It is not enough. Despite the periodic campaigns in favor of those small checks that everyone can carry out independently (such as the measurement of pressure, especially among the elderly, or the oxygen saturation so important in this phase of circulation of a virus that causes a mainly respiratory syndrome ) over a fifth of Italians (21%) continues to claim to never do these simple practices, now possible with cheap and inexpensive devices in your home.

But how could the culture of prevention be promoted? Second one in two respondents (46%) the ideal would be a letter from the National Health Service which proposes to patients a sort of prevention calendar for the various age groups, in short, a precise summary of the checks to be carried out, while 26% of the Italians the most effective channel remains that of relationship with the family doctor. The campaigns of public screening: in fact, one in five control tests (21%) is carried out by citizens who have received a letter or a notice inviting one of these initiatives, often from the NHS itself or from centers, hospitals and clinics to which they have contacted in the past. We need to prevent more and better.