How Old You Look Doesn’t Tell If You’re Healthy or Not

You may not know it, but a doctor assessing you has possibly been trained to determine if you look older than your actual age, this being considered a sign of ill-health.  And you may yourself meet an old friend and decide she’s looking more than her age, and must be ill.  Well, it doesn’t follow, according to a Canadian study reported from Toronto, and published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. 

The researchers decided to test whether  the patient the assessment “appears his/her stated age” or appears older than his/her stated age” has any value in assisting a diagnosis of general ill-health.  They persuaded 58 internal medicine residents and faculty to view 126 patient photographs, and assess how old each patient looked.  They then examined the relationship between the difference between assessed and actual age for each patient, and their state of health (physical and mental) using a recognized self-administered health status survey, the SF-12.

In analyzing the results, estimates of specificity and sensitivity for the ‘method’ were made.  These led to the conclusion that looking up to 5 years older than one’s actual age doesn’t always indicate poor health status.  However, looking 10 or more years older than one’s actual age is, in 99% of cases, an indication of very poor physical or mental health (this means there’s very high specificity of the assessment).  And the study also revealed that many people who looked their age, but not more, were in poor health. 

This study shows that doctors shouldn’t use a patient’s apparent age as a help in diagnosis, unless there’s a very obvious (10 years +) difference to the actual age.  Better to use more accurate assessments . . .