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CHICAGO — Your doctor probably knows it. Medical organizations certainly do. But most patients have no idea.

The annual physical examination — that encounter when a physician looks in your throat, listens to your heart, pokes your abdomen, checks your reflexes, and tests your blood — is no longer a generally recommended medical practice.

There is scant scientific evidence showing that yearly checkups help prevent disease, death or disability for adults with no symptoms.

Instead of an annual physical, healthy adults should undergo a much-streamlined exam that's focused on prevention every one to five years depending on a person's age, sex and medical profile, the American College of Physicians and other professional groups suggest.

Men and women see physicians more frequently for yearly medical checkups than for any other reason, at a cost of $7.8 billion a year in the U.S.

Experts' concerns revolve around two components of the traditional checkup: the comprehensive physical exam and an extensive battery of tests checking a person's blood, urine, thyroid and heart.

Experts question many of the tests traditionally performed during these visits. Chest X-rays, for example, can detect lung cancer but have not been shown to prevent deaths from the disease. Nor are rectal exams useful as screening tools for rectal or prostate cancer.

Similarly, there is little evidence supporting a broad range of tests routinely conducted on patients who get yearly checkups — complete blood counts, blood chemistry panels, thyroid-function checks, urinalyses and electrocardiograms, Calonge noted.

What does make a difference, the task force has found, are interventions that help patients change health-impairing habits or that spotlight emerging illnesses for which reliable and effective treatments exist. Examples include Pap smears, mammograms, cholesterol tests, blood-pressure checks, and counseling to stop smoking, lose weight, get more exercise and eat healthier.

Instead of asking patients to come in every year for a checkup, physicians should be figuring out which patients need what types of preventive care and making sure they get those services, experts suggest.