June 2, 2023 – Last month, journalist and actress Maria Menounos People that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer following a whole-body MRI scan.
The scan had discovered a 1.5-inch mass on her pancreas CT scans and other tests did not detect an issue. A biopsy confirmed the mass was a stage II pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor. In February, she underwent surgery to remove the cancer, a part of her pancreas, her spleen and 17 lymph nodes.
“People need to know there are places they can go to detect the disease 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 stop you. I had that moment where I thought I was finished – but I'm OK because I recognized it early enough.”
Well, Menounos' mission is to persuade insurance firms to cover whole-body MRI scans for everybody. But medical organizations, in addition to experts in oncology, radiology and health psychology, say there continues to be no evidence that these imaging tests may give people the peace of mind they seek or the knowledge they need to forestall health problems.
“We believe that a world where screening is personalized and adaptable over time is a worthy goal. Currently, there are specific recommendations for imaging screening for people with certain inherited genetic mutations such as BRCA2,” said William Dahut, MDchief scientific officer of the American Cancer Society, referring to a mutation known to cause breast cancer. “But that's different than a whole-body MRI scan.”
MRIs typically deal with one organ or area of the body and require a referral from a certified healthcare skilled, but private firms now scan your entire body on request and for a hefty fee, even when you’ve no symptoms or complaints.
Use full-body scans strong magnets and radio waves to create 3D images of your organs, tissues and skeletal system without using radiation. Companies like Prenuptial, VitalScanAnd simonONE say their scans – which cost between $500 and $2,500 – can detect lots of of conditions, including early-stage cancer.
The problem is that whole-body scans carry the chance of false-positive results, which could lead on to unnecessary and potentially invasive follow-up tests and procedures that usually are not only expensive but in addition anxiety-inducing, said Christopher HessHead of the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging on the University of California, San Francisco.
The likelihood that a whole-body MRI will detect a serious, treatable condition is way lower than the chance of dying in a automobile accident (in keeping with the National Security Council), drowning while swimming (1 in 1,006 people) or serious injuries from falling down stairs (37.8 in 10,000 people within the United States), Hess said. In addition, the issues commonly discovered by these scans are inclined to be on the “spectrum of normal” that typically don’t require treatment, resembling small brain aneurysms.
Additional examinations using CT scans and positron emission tomography (PET) may also expose people to radiation that increase their cancer risk later in life, the American Academy of Family Physicians said in a press release advising against using whole-body scans to detect cancer early in people without symptoms. Some procedures may also cause complications, Hess said. For example, a biopsy of a small kidney lesion that will not normally have to be examined could cause internal bleeding.
The American College of Radiology can be against this practice. “To 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 family history of the disease, the group said in a statement released in April. The FDA released a similar statement on whole-body CT scans in 2017, saying: There is no evidence that such procedures bring “more benefits than harm.”
Exceptional case
Experts agree that Menounos' case is the rare exception to the rule. Although CT scans and other tests appeared normal, she continued to have severe abdominal pain and diarrhea. The additional imaging she sought “was actually logical and, because it turned out, vital,” Dahut said, although an MRI of just her abdomen would have sufficed. Still, Early-stage pancreatic cancer is often difficult to detect during routine examinations.
Researchers have estimated that Tumor detection is less than 2% in people without symptoms who get a whole-body MRI. But the use of the 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 European Journal of Radiology One third of the 576 whole-body MRIs showed “clinically relevant findingsOf these, 2.6% were cancers. Imaoka says these numbers are “considerably higher” than those in previous studies, suggesting the scans could be used alongside other screening methods for people without symptoms. (The study also found that 16 of the people screened – 2.8% – had false negatives – scans that initially showed no cause for concern – five of which turned out to be cancer.)
Whole-body MRIs can be helpful and even preferable in certain circumstances, Imaoka said. People with Li-Fraumeni syndrome – a rare genetic disorder that increases the likelihood of developing many different types of cancer – can benefit from the scans because their whole body is at risk for the disease. These scans are also helpful in Detection of multiple myelomabut not so much for the early detection of colon, skin, breast, thyroid, lung and most other cancers, Hess said.
Blood-based tests may be a more useful cancer screening tool for the average person, Hess and Dahut say, because they are easier to perform than magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs). Several have already been approved by the FDAalthough most are used in conjunction with other screening procedures such as mammograms and colonoscopies.
If you're healthy and constantly thinking about the possibility of being sick — putting you in the “apprehensive healthy” category — procedures like whole-body MRIs may provide only temporary relief and may just cause more stress, says Dr. Natalie Dattilo, a clinical psychologist and psychology instructor at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
“It doesn't address the foundation of the issue. In therapy, you’re employed on developing a greater tolerance for uncertainty, becoming more comfortable with the unknown and potentially unpleasant, while also gaining confidence in your personal ability to address anything, even a serious illness,” she said. “Anxiety doesn't arise from the scary thing itself, although it will possibly actually be upsetting, but from the fear of not knowing or of uncertainty and unpredictability.”