The debate over full-body MRIs for preventative health screening has intensified with journalist and actress Maria Menounos’ call for insurance companies to cover them. Menounos underwent a full-body MRI that detected a 1.5-inch mass in her pancreas, which turned out to be a stage II pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, leading to surgery. While private companies offer full-body scans for a high price, medical organizations argue that evidence does not show scans can provide the peace of mind people want or prevent health problems. There is also a risk of false positives leading to anxiety-inducing follow-up tests and procedures, and unnecessary exposure to radiation from additional tests with CT and PET scans. Some experts believe screens may find clinically relevant findings but should not substitute blood tests that are easier and cheaper to perform. False-negative results are also a risk, with symptoms surfacing despite a clean scan. While full-body MRIs may be useful in certain circumstances, like for people with Li-Fraumeni syndrome, Hess says they may provide only temporary relief to “worried healthy” people and fail to address underlying anxiety.
Additional Piece:
Preventive healthcare is becoming increasingly popular as people recognize the importance of early detection and treatment of illnesses. Still, there is talk about the effectiveness of full-body scans or MRIs as a preventive measure, and many experts disagree on whether to recommend them. While some people believe that these scans would provide peace of mind and help prevent health problems, many physicians and medical professionals remain skeptical.
On the one hand, full-body MRIs could detect potential diseases earlier than other screening techniques, such as mammograms or colonoscopies, and potentially save lives. On the other hand, even whole-body MRIs are not entirely foolproof. The scans carry risks of false positives that can lead to unnecessary and potentially invasive follow-up tests and procedures that are not only expensive but also anxiety-inducing.
Overall, there is no conclusive evidence that whole-body screening is cost-effective or effective in prolonging life for people without symptoms, risk factors or a family history of disease. Medical organizations, such as the American College of Radiology, and the FDA have stated that there is no evidence to suggest that full-body CT scans provide “more benefit than harm” and discourage their use.
For these reasons, regular blood tests are becoming an increasingly viable option for people who are concerned about their overall health. Blood tests can help detect potential health issues, including cancer, and don’t require expensive specialized equipment or radiation exposure. While they do not provide the same in-depth analysis as a whole-body MRI, blood tests are much simpler, easier, and cheaper to get done regularly.
In summary, while there may be some benefit to undergoing full-body scans, including MRIs, medical experts suggest that the risks may outweigh the benefits. Instead, seeking regular medical advice, attention, and blood tests may be a better option for preventative healthcare in the long run.
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June 2, 2023 – Last month, journalist and actress Maria Menounos said People who had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer after undergoing a full-body MRI.
The scan had detected a 1.5-inch mass in her pancreas after CT scans and other tests could not find a problem. A biopsy confirmed the mass to be a stage II pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor. In February, she underwent surgery to remove the cancer, part of her pancreas, her spleen and 17 lymph nodes.
“I need people to know that there are places they can go to detect things early,” said Menounos, 44, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2017 and type 1 diabetes last summer. People. “You can’t let fear get in the way. I had that moment where I thought I was lost, but I’m okay because I figured this out early enough.”
Now, Menounos mission is to convince insurance companies to cover full-body MRIs for everyone. But medical organizations, as well as experts in oncology, radiology and health psychology, say the evidence does not yet show that these imaging procedures can give people the peace of mind they want or the information they need to prevent health problems. .
“We believe that a world where detection is personalized and adaptable over time is a goal to aspire to. At this time, there are specific imaging screening recommendations for people with specific inherited gene mutations, such as BRCA2,” saying Dr William Dahut, chief scientific officer of the American Cancer Society, referring to a mutation known to cause breast cancer. “However, this is different from a full-body MRI.”
MRIs generally focus on one organ or area of the body and require referrals from qualified medical professionals. But now, private companies, at your request and for a high price, will scan your entire body, even if you have no symptoms or concerns.
Use of whole body scans powerful magnets and radio waves to produce 3D images of your organs, tissues, and skeletal system without the use of radiation. companies like prénuvo, VitalScanand simonone they say their scans, which cost between $500 and $2,500, can detect hundreds of medical conditions, including early-stage cancers.
The problem is that full-body scans carry the risk of false-positive results that can lead to unnecessary and potentially invasive follow-up tests and procedures that are not only expensive but also anxiety-inducing, he said. Dr Christopher HessChairman of the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at the University of California, San Francisco.
The chance that a whole-body MRI will find a serious condition that is treatable is much lower than your risk of dying in a car accident (1 in 93 people over a lifetime, according to the National Security Council), drowning while swimming (1 in 1,006 people) or seriously injuring themselves by falling down stairs (37.8 in 10,000 people in the United States), Hess said. Also, the problems that these scans often find tend to be on the “normal spectrum” that don’t usually require treatment, such as small brain aneurysms.
Additional tests with CT and PET scans can also expose people to radiation that can increase your risk of cancer Later in life, the American Academy of Family Physicians said in a statement that it discouraged the use of whole-body scans for early detection of cancer in people who do not have symptoms. Some procedures could also cause complications, Hess said. For example, a biopsy of a small kidney lesion, which would normally not need testing, could cause internal bleeding.
The American College of Radiology also opposes the practice. “Till the date, there is no documented evidence that whole-body screening is cost-effective or effective in prolonging life” in people without symptoms, risk factors, or a family history of disease, the group said in a statement published in April. The FDA issued a similar statement in 2017 regarding full-body CT scans, saying no evidence indicates that such procedures provide “more benefit than harm.”
Exceptional case
Experts agree that the Menounos case is the rare exception to the rule. Although CT scans and other tests appeared normal, he continued to have severe abdominal pain and diarrhea. The additional imaging he was seeking “was certainly logical and necessary,” Dahut said, although an MRI of his belly would have sufficed. Still, early stage pancreatic cancers can often be hard to find on routine scans.
Researchers have estimated that tumor detection is less than 2% in people without symptoms who undergo a whole-body MRI. But the use of scans as a preventative health measure is evolving, said Resten Imaoka, MD, a musculoskeletal radiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
A 2021 study published in the European Journal of Radiology found that a third of 576 whole-body MRIs showed “clinically relevant findings”, 2.6% of which were cancers. Imaoka says these numbers are “considerably higher” than previous research, suggesting that the scans could be used with other screening methods for people without symptoms. (The study also found that 16 people studied, 2.8%, had false-negative results, scans that initially revealed no cause for concern, five of which turned out to be cancer.)
Whole-body MRIs may be useful and even preferred in certain circumstances, Imaoka said. People who have Li-Fraumeni syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that makes people more likely to get many different types of cancer, may benefit from scans because their entire bodies are threatened by the disease. These scans are also useful for multiple myeloma screeningbut not so much for early detection of colon, skin, breast, thyroid, lung and most other cancers, Hess said.
Blood tests may be a more useful cancer screening tool for the average person, Hess and Dahut said, because they’re easier to perform than MRIs. Several have already been approved by the FDA.although most are used in conjunction with other screening procedures such as mammograms and colonoscopies.
If you’re in good health and find that you can’t stop thinking about the possibility of getting sick, putting you in the “worried healthy” category, seeking procedures like whole-body MRIs may only provide temporary relief and perhaps more stress. said Natalie Dattilo, PhD, a clinical psychologist and instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
“It does not solve the root of the problem. In therapy, you work to develop a greater tolerance for uncertainty, become more comfortable with the unknown and potentially unpleasant, while gaining confidence in your ability to handle anything, even serious illness,” he said. “The fear does not come from the feared thing itself, although it can certainly be disturbing, but from the fear of not knowing, or from the uncertainty and unpredictability of it.”
https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20230602/you-probably-dont-need-a-full-body-mri?src=RSS_PUBLIC
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