Anyone tried this? Early cancer detection.

The suspense would kill me…

I know someone (a doctor actually) who was doing them on a regular basis (don't know the interval) because of a previous skin cancer diagnosis.

This person (age mid-50s) went in for one and they found a cerebral aneurysm. No symptoms or anything, but surgery to remove it was performed within a couple of weeks. Probably would have never known about it otherwise, at least not until it burst.

I've heard of these concierge medical clinics that offer various "memberships" for a monthly fee. Depending on your membership level, you can get one once a year. There is one in Dallas - it's called Fountain Life and Tony Robbins is one of the investors/founders, I think. Problem is, the annual cost of membership is $19,500.

That frequency (one a year) seems like overkill to me, in an otherwise healthy person. Certainly the cost is nuts.

I absolutely believe that. Seems like the odds are you spend even more time and money chasing things that end up being benign.

The doctor I know does not advocate this as standard of care or encourage people to do it (in part because of the expense).

My dad does and of doctors who have podcast suggest for longevity. My dad found a place in Dallas that was good and affordable. I think 2500-3000

I think this is horrible idea and would not do it myself even if free. If you scan everyone roughly 20% will have some incidental cyst or growth that will lead to further tests and possibly surgery that is not needed. Same goes for the companies offering a cash only battery of blood work, you can end up chasing meaningless results.

When I was in school, the hospital was getting a new MRI machine and they asked for volunteers to get different things scanned as they were calibrating protocols or something and needed to make sure everything was good. I thought it would be cool, and I volunteered. Free MRI, right?

Can't recall which protocol they did, but ended up getting my face done. Essentially anterior half of my head. When I got out, the tech was like "hang on a minute, we're just going to get the radiologist to come talk to you." They found a lesion in my parotid gland. He went through a couple things it could be and said it's probably nothing to worry about, but I could go see ENT to do a biopsy.

I was a very busy student at the time, and didn't really have time to go to appointments and get biopsies and stuff. And I just did a bunch of research into the possibilities and ultimately decided it's probably benign, and I can just watch it closely. It has been about 11 years and, knock on wood, I'm still ok.

It could very well be cancer slowly spreading through my body (doubt it), but that's just my personal example. What if it was on my liver, or a benign pancreatic cyst, or brain. Would I have been able to convince myself to ignore it? Would I have ended up getting poked, prodded, and gone through a ton of stress just to find out it was nothing? In the ER, lots of patients come in for abdominal pain, or a cough, or something, get scanned, and find something strange that requires workup. I remember one poor young lady, around 30, sent to the ER from urgent care because it looked like she had cancer all over her lungs. Can't remember what the pulmonologists ended up finding, but benign.

As a nerd, I'd love to take a peak inside my body. But I also kinda don't want to know some things either.

I had a similar experience back in medical school around 1996. They were working on an atlas of normal brain MRIs so I had to do all these cognitive tests to prove my brain was normal then they did a detailed MRI. Didn't find anything but was cool to see your brain on a screen!

Scanned the heck out of everything in '23, mostly abdominal. Worst part was getting the contrast through a pic. I never noticed anything from the contrast injection before. That was weirdly uncomfortable. Fortunately, it was post treatment after getting off the unknown cancer floor of Seaton. At least they knew what they were looking for and the last time with the pic was just checking results.

Taylor Dukes, a functional medicine NP in Fort Worth, found a brain tumor through the Prenuvo scan. I think she had the tumor resected about a year ago but worked with a Dr. in California and was able to get it the tumor to shrink prior to surgery.

I did it about a year ago. Both MRI and CT Scan.

Had a weird lump in my abdomen that radiated a pulse when pressed on. Concern was an aneurysm. Turned out to be a torn muscle that I never knew happened (probably from a bike wreck at some point).

Did find out that I have significant calcium scoring in my arteries, which was concerning. Made some changes, and have drastically improved my lipid numbers.

I shopped around and found some discounts. They did push for a membership / subscription.

Kool said:

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The flip side of finding something treatable that is potentially very harmful if not discovered is that a whole body MRI will definitely turn up a bunch of "incidentalomas", incidental findings that will drive you crazy getting further workups over. Maxillary sinus mucous retention cysts, scattered white matter disease in the brain, thyroid nodules, liver cysts, you name it.

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It's why some doctors argue against yearly mammograms for women. The cost and emotional distress that ensues from now testing and treating every random lump that would've otherwise never posed an issue makes it not worth it if you're an otherwise low-risk patient.