2 base jumps? are those really that dangerous?
Depends on if you’re wearing a wing suit or not.
A full body MRI earns you a year of smoking
21–30 of 40 posts
Re: A full body MRI earns you a year of smoking
#22Is the author confusing MRI with a CAT scan? or is there a health risk associated with high flux magnetic fields that I am unfamiliar with. update: The article is second order analysis. need to read it's linked article to understand it is more about the costs(including psychological) of questionable tests and not a direct health risk of MRI devices.
Is the commentator not even opening the article before commenting?
Extremely normal on HN.
Re: A full body MRI earns you a year of smoking
#23This doesn't seem to account for the outcome that someone receives testing and treatment for a problem found by the MRI, and is injured in the process, despite the fact that non-treatment would have been harmless; a not-uncommon outcome in the real world.
Do you have an example? I don’t know of many diagnosis methods leading to significant injury.
Things such as a needless biopsy of healthy tissue, leading to an infection and sepsis.
A colonoscopy perforating the bowel and leading to an infection and sepsis.
These things happen, they are not common but they are not zero-chance events either.
And you have to consider the opportunity costs of consuming the doctor's time, the labwork, and the facilities, possibly delaying treatment for someone else who actually needs it.
Re: A full body MRI earns you a year of smoking
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have an example? I don’t know of many diagnosis methods leading to significant injury.
For example, many kinds of biopsy can result in serious infection or other surgical complications.
presumably if they're seeing a cancer worthy of a biopsy the risk justifies cutting in there and checking
yeah there is a risk you get an infection but pancreatic cancer will kill you dead, and is no joke.
Re: A full body MRI earns you a year of smoking
#25dogshit title.
Re: A full body MRI earns you a year of smoking
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have an example? I don’t know of many diagnosis methods leading to significant injury.
My guess is unnecessary surgeries which isn't an unreasonable concern. Something like 40% of MRIs showing spinal disc herniation are asymptomatic and the rate of surgeries to fix can be a coinflip.
Having a diagnosis doesn't mean we have to treat. If we find something minor with no symptoms we can ignore it. However there are things with minor symptoms people ignore to their harm. I wish I had my MRI a decade sooner, but the symptoms were the same thing everyone else has that is self treatable and comes and goes over time. When it finally got bad enough that I demanded help the normal help didn't work and only then did they find something major and rare.
Re: A full body MRI earns you a year of smoking
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
For example, many kinds of biopsy can result in serious infection or other surgical complications.
presumably if they're seeing a cancer worthy of a biopsy the risk justifies cutting in there and checking yeah there is a risk you get an infection but pancreatic cancer will kill you dead, and is no joke.
Is it cancer or just a 'cyst'? I'm not MD but my understanding is we often cannot tell without the biopsy but mostly it isn't cancer. Of course this is a generic discussion which could go either way depending on where they find something.
Re: A full body MRI earns you a year of smoking
#282 base jumps? are those really that dangerous?
More so than normal life but not horrible.
Re: A full body MRI earns you a year of smoking
#29I am surprised that spending a day on the Ukraine front is equivalent to _only_ a year of smoking. That seems to clash either the average life expectancy I read about Russians on the front-line (being measured in hours)
The Ukraine side has much better survival rates. I still wouldn't want to be there, but if I was forced to choose.
Re: A full body MRI earns you a year of smoking
#30I like the linked Scott Alexander post, but I also genuinely wonder what is the rate of change on these tests? The linked test Prenuvo has competition from Ezra + Function and others. It this drops from $2k to $500 over time, it makes it look considerably better. The more we can use different testing modalities, we should be able to reduce false positives in each modality.
I will say, that for cancer specifically, tests like Galleri seem better, but as that cost comes down I could see in 5-10 years an annual $500 scan that offers a full body scan of some kind, plus comprehensive bloodwork including blood cancer screening, and the type of thing that could be done annually by many in the US.