{"id":9697,"date":"2011-06-27T15:56:24","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T14:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=9697"},"modified":"2011-06-27T15:56:24","modified_gmt":"2011-06-27T14:56:24","slug":"muir-graythe-most-effective-screening-programme-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2011\/06\/27\/muir-graythe-most-effective-screening-programme-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Muir Gray:&#8221;The most effective screening programme ever&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/site\/blog\/icons\/muir_gray.jpg\" alt=\"Muir Gray\" width=\"160\" height=\"110\" align=\"left\" \/>&#8220;The most effective screening programme ever,&#8221; this was Richard Doll\u2019s gentle jest when I was director of national screening programmes. Aware of my efforts to ensure that screening did much more good than harm, using every improvement technique I could learn from IHI, Toyota, and wherever, he would point out that the auscultation of the heart of young recruits in the first world war led to large numbers of them being deemed to be unfit for the front because of a sign we now know to be without pathological significance \u2013 a systolic murmur.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>DAH, disorderly action of the heart, or soldiers\u2019 heart, spared many people from being exposed to an environment where the mortality was 50% , hence Richard\u2019s proposition, made as usual with humility and humour. The review of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/342\/bmj.d3644.extract\">Ford Madox Ford\u2019s &#8220;<em>Good Soldier<\/em>&#8221; by Theodore Dalrymple<\/a> showed just how much energy these \u201ctroubled hearts&#8221; had, although many of them were crippled for life, or chose to be invalids.<\/p>\n<p>Richard Doll would have enjoyed it greatly and teased me again with his reminder of &#8220;the most effective screening programme ever.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Muir Gray<\/strong> is visiting professor of knowledge management, Nuffield Department of Surgery, University of Oxford. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The most effective screening programme ever,&#8221; this was Richard Doll\u2019s gentle jest when I was director of national screening programmes. Aware of my efforts to ensure that screening did much [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2011\/06\/27\/muir-graythe-most-effective-screening-programme-ever\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2087],"tags":[124,599],"class_list":["post-9697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-muir-gray","tag-cardiology","tag-screening"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Muir Gray:&quot;The most effective screening programme ever&quot; - The BMJ<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2011\/06\/27\/muir-graythe-most-effective-screening-programme-ever\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Muir Gray:&quot;The most effective screening programme ever&quot; - The BMJ\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;The most effective screening programme ever,&#8221; this was Richard Doll\u2019s gentle jest when I was director of national screening programmes. 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