janeeyre said:
Has anyone had a test which scans the body looking for dormant or potential disease (ie. cancer). Here in the Northeast, there is a company called LifeScan that will perform a full body scan looking for health problems at your expense. It is not covered by insurance. I am wondering if it is worth it. If you did have this test, what company did you use.
These global shotgun approaches to screening are not working out from a decision-analysis standpoint. The problem is that in an undifferentiated population, they show up all kinds of unanticipated and incidental "abnormalities" which in fact may be normal variation, old scar tissue, benign growths, calcification from wear and tear and many, many other things. Once identified, many doctors in this medicolegal climate feel obliged to recommend follow-up studies.
Next thing you know, radiocontrast (dye) studies and biopsies are being done, leading to complications such as infection, kidney failure, allergic reactions. These are not common, but in the context of mass screening their numbers start to rise. In the end, these tests can end up causing more harm than benefit. Sure every one has an anecdote about how a life was saved by an accidental discovery of an early cancer but for every one of those there may be hundreds who suffered or even died for no reason.
There are clear and researched recommendations for screening test and they are fairly narrow. I would pass on screening "total body scans."
BTW, when done for a specific disease because of underlying symptoms, abnormal lab results, or physical exam findings, scanning is quite a different thing (and even then, localized to the area of concern). Their accuracy goes way up.
I haven't even mentioned cost, radiation exposure, quality control, etc.