article_snippet.sent: Fundamentally well people will appear in doctors' offices with "abnormal" results.  
article_snippet.sent: Abnormalities are common in normal people, as we learned when Whole-body CT scanning was in vogue a decade ago (thankfully, only briefly).  
article_snippet.sent: So doctors will increasingly face one of two options: take the time to reassure these new patients that these new patients results aren't really that abnormal or chase down abnormal results with more testing.
article_snippet.sent: Further testing will often make clear that the initial results were false alarms.  
article_snippet.sent: Or the initial results were false alarms will confirm the presence of abnormality -- most of which will be minor abnormalities.  
article_snippet.sent: Often it won't be clear what to do, but doctors will be pressed to do something.  
article_snippet.sent: To see how far wrong testing can go, check out South Korea: where ultrasound screening has increased the amount of thyroid cancer -- and thyroid cancer surgery -- by 15-fold.
article_snippet.sent: And then there are all the office visits and subsequent testing for the abnormal results.  
article_snippet.sent: Of course, there have been genuine advances in diagnostic testing.  
article_snippet.sent: Diagnostic tests can be extremely useful in sorting out acute medical problems.  
article_snippet.sent: Abnormalities in sick patients mean something different than the same abnormalities in well people.  