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> My real anger at airport screening is that we have found it possible to fund and implement this level of screening, at massive monetary, human and privacy cos
by ch4s3 9mo ago
> My real anger at airport screening is that we have found it possible to fund and implement this level of screening, at massive monetary, human and privacy cost, but I can't go to my doctor and for a few pennies (sorry, those don't exist now, how about for a few nickles?) get a body scan that does all the 3d segmentation, recognition, etc etc etc. We could actually save lives
This always strikes me as a weird thing tech people believe about medicine. Full body scans just aren’t medically useful for otherwise healthy people. You’ll inevitably see something and it’s almost certainly going to be benign but might send you down the path of a lot of expensive and dangerous treatments or exploratory procedures. This is why there’s always so much debate about prostrate exam and breast exam age recommendations. There’s a tipping point where the risk of iatrogenesis outward the risk of disease.
- sothatsit 9mo agoPeople should be able to do full 3d scans of their bodies, and then doctors should be able to tell them what they should ignore. If they spot something abnormal they could suggest coming back 6 months or a year later to check if it has changed, just like mole scans. The problems that you suggest only come from people overreacting to test results. We can do better.
- ch4s3 9mo agoYou can now in the US it’s just expensive, and of little medical value:
- sothatsit 9mo agoYep, it is working as intended then. My point was more that “preventative MRIs cause more problems than they solve” is an annoying statement because it does not have to be true if you get good medical advice. But saying “preventative MRIs are not worth the cost” is quite reasonable.
- cyberax 9mo agoBS. Full body scans are amazing, and should be added to the normal health screening along with blood tests. Doctors need to get out of the headspace where an MRI is something reserved only to confirm the terminal cancer diagnosis. Pretty much all the supposed issues are solved by taking the second scan a couple months in the future.
- ch4s3 9mo agoI could dump loads of academic research on you about this topic, but it seems like you’re unwilling to engage.
- cyberax 9mo agoI read most of the research on this topic. And it's all basically "overdiagnosing". We had the same story about prostate cancer screening: "overdiagnosing", "people die with prostate cancer but not of prostate cancer", blah blah blah. It turned out that simply adjusting the aggressiveness of follow-up was enough to make prostate cancer result in significantly fewer deaths. From my point of view: MRI is the ONLY tool that can catch things like pancreatic cancer before it's lethal.
- ch4s3 9mo agoSure but you have to scale that prostate intervention change across literally everything in every kind of internal medicine. There's just no way to justify the cost of doing this regularly for most people.
- cyberax 9mo agoJust imagine the same argument, but for bloodwork. You're literally saying: "We didn't have to deal with these pesky MRIs before, so go away". We will need some additional radiologist training, and the primary care doctors will need to learn when to escalate and/or require followup scans. But that's really about it. MRIs are _cheap_ these days. The true cost of a scan is around $1000, including the radiologist's reading. They don't have to be reserved as a tool of the last resort.