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How often do full-body MRIs find cancer?

usatoday.com

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Re: How often do full-body MRIs find cancer?

#2
Answering the question in the title...

> One study in 2020 found that 95% of asymptomatic patients had some type of "abnormal" finding, but just 1.8% of these findings were indeed cancer.

So a bit less than 1.8% of the time in this study

> Prenuvo's recent Polaris Study followed 1,011 patients for at least one year following a whole-body MRI scan. Of these patients, 41 had biopsies. More than half of the 41 were diagnosed with cancer.

That's 2.0%

Note that this doesn't mean that 1.7~2.0% of people have cancer without knowing it. It could be more:

> A negative scan doesn’t mean you’re disease-free. Some cancers and conditions simply aren’t visible yet or aren’t reliably detected on a one-time full-body MRI."

But also perhaps less, in a way:

> "You're finding something that never would have caused you any problem in your life, and in cancer, we call that overdiagnosis," Vickers says.

Re: How often do full-body MRIs find cancer?

#3
I pay an extra $60 a year to have my ophthalmologist take a digital image of my retina. It comes back as normal every year, but if something does change we can diff the image against the baseline.

Maybe I don't want to look for cancer right now but if I spend $1,000 every 5 years to take an image for later use... isn't that useful?

Re: How often do full-body MRIs find cancer?

#4

I pay an extra $60 a year to have my ophthalmologist take a digital image of my retina. It comes back as normal every year, but if something does change we can diff the image against the baseline. Maybe I don't want to look for cancer right now but if I spend $1,000 every 5 years to take an image for later use... isn't that useful?

Er wait is retinal cancer a thing?

Re: How often do full-body MRIs find cancer?

#5
post #2

Answering the question in the title... > One study in 2020 found that 95% of asymptomatic patients had some type of "abnormal" finding, but just 1.8% of these findings were indeed cancer. So a bit less than 1.8% of the time in this study > Prenuvo's recent Polaris Study followed 1,011 patients for at least one year following a whole-body MRI scan. Of these patients, 41 had biopsies. More than half of the 41 were diag…

Yep, I have experience with both. It found cancer for my wife and she was able to treat it immediately. Fully recovered.

It found a weird spot on me that turned out to a pancreatic rest.

The only reason we did the scans were because we were making a significant life decision that we didn’t want to have to backtrack if either got diagnosed with cancer within a year . We knew nothing was guaranteed but we wanted to do some tests.

Re: How often do full-body MRIs find cancer?

#7
post #4

I pay an extra $60 a year to have my ophthalmologist take a digital image of my retina. It comes back as normal every year, but if something does change we can diff the image against the baseline. Maybe I don't want to look for cancer right now but if I spend $1,000 every 5 years to take an image for later use... isn't that useful?

Er wait is retinal cancer a thing?

Yes. Like OP, I do a picture every year. Three years ago there was a scare, that turned out to be nothing.

Re: How often do full-body MRIs find cancer?

#8

I pay an extra $60 a year to have my ophthalmologist take a digital image of my retina. It comes back as normal every year, but if something does change we can diff the image against the baseline. Maybe I don't want to look for cancer right now but if I spend $1,000 every 5 years to take an image for later use... isn't that useful?

Yes, and it seems like its purposefully ignored in the "body scan" debate. full CT scans would be more problematic, and MRI's (especially no contrast ones) don't pick up a lot of things... but having annual comparisons over a few years would likely fill in some of those gaps. literally and figuratively.

Re: How often do full-body MRIs find cancer?

#9
post #4

I pay an extra $60 a year to have my ophthalmologist take a digital image of my retina. It comes back as normal every year, but if something does change we can diff the image against the baseline. Maybe I don't want to look for cancer right now but if I spend $1,000 every 5 years to take an image for later use... isn't that useful?

Er wait is retinal cancer a thing?

theres a ton of degeneative stuff too that's not strongly age corrilated.

Re: How often do full-body MRIs find cancer?

#10
post #2

Answering the question in the title... > One study in 2020 found that 95% of asymptomatic patients had some type of "abnormal" finding, but just 1.8% of these findings were indeed cancer. So a bit less than 1.8% of the time in this study > Prenuvo's recent Polaris Study followed 1,011 patients for at least one year following a whole-body MRI scan. Of these patients, 41 had biopsies. More than half of the 41 were diag…

> You're finding something that never would have caused you any problem in your life

Is it though? Isn't it possible you could be early-detecting something serious that is much easier to treat now vs when symptoms appear?

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