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by Someone1234 489 days ago
If Grail's Galleri is that great, why isn't it part of an annual checkup?
3 comments

It's expensive, accuracy isn't very high, and no one has done the studies to demonstrate that it actually improves subject outcomes. By its very nature that type of research takes a long time because the investigators have to wait years to detect a difference in subject survival rates or other significant endpoints.

There's a huge amount of funding going into the liquid biopsy space so things will improve. But don't expect rapid changes in clinical practice.

Annual might not be any good. I knew a guy who had a history of colon cancer in his family. He got checked annually from his mid 30s on. At 46, a few months after a clear checkup, he visited his doctor who sent him for another check, and bam: he had cancer.
NHS is evaluating it now in a trial. https://www.nhs-galleri.org
An update on that trial: https://www.bmj.com/content/386/bmj.q1706

It doesn't look great.

Absolutely right! This test is hyped. It has abysmally low sensitivity of 16% to detect stage I cancers and overall 44% for cancers of other stages. It is extremely poor sensitivity for any detection test.