Comments on detection of cardiac disease in group examinations.

In this brief presentation remarks will be confined to the discovery and evaluation of heart disease as found in pre-employment examinations, in college entrance examinations, and in periodic re-examinations. Although the zeal for disease control may not exist for heart as it does for pulmonary disease, it is equally challenging in preventive medicine to attempt to discover and control latent heart disease before it assumes its devastating and incapacitating stages. Prompt recognition of heart disease has important implications for the victim’s welfare; by the same token early assurance that suspected heart disease is not present has important significance for any person and particularly for the individual who is subject to unfounded fear. Care should be taken that the patient is promptly advised by his physician concerning significant abnormality. In personal experience, the patient with cardiac disease who has received a constructive explanation of his defect usually feels and ofttimes expresses appreciation. The person who, on his own volition, seeks aid from the physician for the relief of symptoms or for health information is the individual who will be the most cooperative and most receptive of health advice. The practicing physician in his routine work has an unequalled opportunity to teach health habits and to discuss prevention as well as treatment of disease. It is advisable for the patient’s own physician to present to him the findings of the examination. A certain degree of normal anxiety prompted the medical consultation; therefore, sound advice on the part of the physician should orient the individual with regard to his complaint. Those who come from physical surveys, pre-employment and school entrance examination, need especially to be appraised of the value of the findings of the examinations and their follow-up. At the other end of the clinical spectrum of patients with excessive anxiety stand those with indifference and sometimes boredom. By and large, examination of healthy young people instills good medical habits and teaches the coming generation to seek and evaluate advice from their physicians. It also may be said that, more and more, industry is attempting to recognize latent disease and defects by offering pre-employment and periodic examinations with the attempt to adjust work requirement to the individual’s physical capacity.