I’ve seen people bring up the whole “increased false positive rate” which is totally understandable but I don’t get how this couldn’t be a potential preventative diagnostic tool to be combined with annual physicals. Eg that unless something is obviously wrong you wouldn’t action based on any findings from a full body scan; instead you would retain the record and repeat the scan 12-24 months later. Compare anything notable for growth or other irregular change, rinse and repeat. I would imagine that would greatly decrease the amount of pointless imaging and biopsy done. There would certainly still be some done but is that not the case now?
I would imagine this is downplayed because us insurance companies are generally not huge fans of expensive preventative care procedures with little evidence base (and to the last point, fair). And additionally I’d imagine physicians and radiologists have some worry about the potential liability of things being incorrectly being labeled as benign or to be monitored and turning into malpractice claims.
So the evidence base gets established by rich people who can afford to cut insurance out of the equation and hire physicians that are open to these kinds of procedures. Unfair and something I’ll be very bitter about if I ever die of a cancer that could have been detected earlier if I was lucky enough to get imaged in the area for whatever reason.
I would imagine this is downplayed because us insurance companies are generally not huge fans of expensive preventative care procedures with little evidence base (and to the last point, fair). And additionally I’d imagine physicians and radiologists have some worry about the potential liability of things being incorrectly being labeled as benign or to be monitored and turning into malpractice claims.
So the evidence base gets established by rich people who can afford to cut insurance out of the equation and hire physicians that are open to these kinds of procedures. Unfair and something I’ll be very bitter about if I ever die of a cancer that could have been detected earlier if I was lucky enough to get imaged in the area for whatever reason.