Prenuvo and other clinics are offering low-cost whole body MRI. This can be used to detect certain medical conditions at an early stage. Diagnostic MRI, while widely considered to be one of the most valuable imaging modalities, is often used quite late because it is slow and therefore expensive. Because of this slowness, screening using MRI was impractical — diagnostic quality scans would either take 3-4 hours, be painful to go through and prohibitively expensive or clinics would cut corners and take non-diagnostic scans, leading to lower accuracy and more unnecessary follow-up.
Prenuvo solved the speed problem in MRI using proprietary acquisition protocols that have been honed over 10 years of performing diagnostic screening exams for patients all over the world. This enables a whole body scan to be done in 60 minutes.
At Prenuvo, where scans are not covered by health insurance, a full-body scan will cost $2,499. At a doctor’s office, the cost can range from $400 to $12,000, however, it will heavily depend on your health insurance plan.
The Society of Radiologists says these services are over-hyped.
“Currently, there is no evidence that whole-body MRI screening will improve health outcomes. Using the whole-body screening CT as an example, patients have felt compelled or influenced to get it when it was popular. Our experience showed that it was not beneficial or cost effective in most patients. The cost for whole body MRI screening is in the order of thousands of dollars and is usually not covered by insurance. This money is better spent on scientifically proven, evidence-based age-appropriate screening or health maintenance strategies.”
For many people, the allure of addressing health issues before they are beyond medical treatment, can provide peace of mind. Marketing efforts used by whole-body imaging services tend to highlight “lifesaving diagnoses.” Unfortunately, such claims can be more hype than substance.
Many companies offer whole-body MRI scans that they say can screen for more than 500 conditions in 60 minutes or less. The price tag for the service is around $2,500.
“What’s often advertised with whole body screening is that it will detect a treatable cancer that would otherwise have gone unchecked and killed you,” said Christopher Hess, MD, PhD, the Alexander R. Margulis Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at the University of California, San Francisco. “But the actual number of cancers that act that way is very small.”
Linda C. Chu, MD, agrees.
“The idea of screening exams, such as mammography or lung cancer screening with CT, is to detect pathology early, with improved patient outcomes due to early intervention. These types of screening exams often target patients at higher risk of disease, such as long-time smokers, in order to improve the yield of the screening test while minimizing false positives and reducing costs,” said Dr. Chu, associate professor of radiology and associate director of the diagnostic division at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. “The yield of these whole-body MRIs in a non-targeted population will be low and the false positives and incidentalomas will lead to increased utilization.”
Dr. Hess questioned a whole-body MRI’s ability to detect the oft-advertised “rare but aggressive cancer.”
“Definitively excluding pancreatic cancer requires a very high-quality abdominal MRI—at a level of quality that whole-body techniques cannot match,” he said.
In addition, Dr. Chu noted that whole-body screening MRI sequences are not optimized to characterize the pathology in each body part and may lead to more follow-ups.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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So, what are the technical issues surrounding doing a high quality full body MRI then? Is it changing scan types as you pass over certain body sections? Is it getting the human to stop breathing periodically? Is it some sort of scan speed issue?
It is actually quite hard to find a comprehensive flow chart type of guide to all the various tests and screenings one should undertake at the various stages of their life, quantified and steamlined for costs and risks of future medical interventions that one would like to assess and be aware of – especially if one is otherwise healthy. Well publicized colonoscopies and mammograms in people’s middle age is simple – understanding family history is obvious – generic genetic testing is mostly inconclusive. But what screening would one want if they are trying to maximize healthspan or life span? Our reactive rather than pro-active medical culture (and people’s own indifference or risk profile notwithstanding) tends to promote against this. The Mayo Clinic and such offer several ‘assessment programs’ (i.e .Executive Program at Mayo) based on existing conditions or age are above-average. For the most part, i would say the traditional yearly check-up – where available and funded – falls well short. I think many would pay a significant part of their annual salary for an additional 5 years of productive life – having adjusted their lifestyle just a bit at the right time.
I wonder if, in a few years, a person over 60 could go in for evaluation of different parts of the body over the course of many months? A high-quality MRI of the lower abdomen, then a few months later a high-quality MRI of the upper abdomen, then a few months later a high-quality MRI of the throat and neck, and finally a high-quality scan of the head?
Could that catch most cancers and heart problems, yet still be humane? Of course, people who wanted could finance these tests just like they finance cars.
Small area localized spinal MRIs diagnosed my disc problems. The resulting surgeries to repair the deteriorating discs have been a godsend for me.
Yeah, my takeaway was “hmm maybe I should get a very high-quality abdominal MRI now and then.” Pancreatic cancer seems to be the common one that never gets caught early enough. Maybe there are other cancers that work that way.
At least this is better, safety wise, than whole body CT scans that patients should be warned about:
“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimates that the extra risk of any one person developing a fatal cancer from a typical CT procedure is about 1 in 2,000. MRIs do not use ionizing radiation, so there is no issue of raising cancer risk. “
This should be 10 times less expensive to make it available for everyone. $2500 is one month salary for most people.