[rafaelreinert]

sorry for how don't agree, but yearly full body mri should be mandatory for every >40 years. Ok, over treatment is a concert but any cancer is worst than it and basically most of people will have some cancer if live long enough. then if you have full body mri you will find most of the cancers on an early stage. Don't critics people that is doing it, but critics the system that don't provide it for every body.

[accrual]

I think the main problem is just that's expensive and time consuming to do full body MRIs, especially on everyone over age 40. The only person I know who gets a full-body MRI each year was my neurologist who had the resources to do it.

There's only so many MRI machines in the world, staff to operate them, and radiologists to interpret the images. A limited study like an MRI of the brain might take a few minutes to read, but a whole body would take much longer. You may even want subspeciality doctors to read individual body parts (e.g. neuro, MSK) which would cost more and take longer.

There's also the risk of finding something benign then putting the patient through treatment and surgery for something that wasn't harming them.

If we could somehow have inexpensive scanners and an inexpensive way to interpret the resulting images - then yes, we should expand access to MRIs as they're a generally safe way to screen for abnormalities.

AI interpretation could lower the cost of reading the images, but a lot of the expense is in the hugely complex scanner which requires liquid helium, etc. and the technologists to schedule and operate it.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

This really depends on the country. Almost every general hospital in small to mid-sized german cities has them. By that I mean from about 20.000 to 25.000 people upwards. Like https://maps.app.goo.gl/s2fd6QeAu9HPbpQA8 / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwelm In larger cities of course even more have them, also adjacent to the hospital, indepedently operated ones, apart from the one(s) in the hospital, sharing just the cooling infrastructure. Visible by the big outside tanks, with partially iced pipes, and/or tiniest wisps of vapor.

But! There are also many MRI-sites somewhere in the suburbs, or lesser downtowns/business districts in the periphery, and they don't have that visible big outside tank anymore! In smaller buildings. Like https://maps.app.goo.gl/5H65r4rf58LNiLDb9 , as opposed to this https://maps.app.goo.gl/jcpe3cpnpPtHSaCs6

(Hrrmpf. That stuff must be hidden between the trees from the air. I have seen that. Or they rebuilt that stuff and put it underground, or something.)

Anyway. Having a MRI is no problem at all, fast/no long waiting times, and costs you nothing, if necessary.

It's different for yearly 'vanity/hypochondriac' checkups, still fast, but head/brain are 300 to 400EUR, full body about 900 to 1000€, probably also depending on used contrasting agents, if any. I avoid these like hell. So no real clue about that.

In ze United Stätez that stuff isn't to be had under 3000USD, can easily go from 5000 to 9000 in my experience (Limited to CO, CA, TX), and no matter which insurance you have an infinite bureaucratic hassle. Guess where I'm doing it when I'm not in a hurry? ;)

[joshmarinacci]

If more people want MRIs then the market will create more machines. And hopefully the tech will improve over time, though we might be waiting for room temperature superconductors for real progress.

Lack of staff to analyze the results is a problem, but not a huge one. Simply having a baseline to compare for later scans is valuable by itself, without any detailed analysis of the original.

[BurningFrog]

Unsurprisingly, AI is now being used for MRI, both to make the data better and help analyze the results:

https://openmedscience.com/transforming-magnetic-resonance-t...

Compensating for patient movements (heartbeats, breathing, etc) seems really useful!

[rangestransform]

The American medical association will fight tooth and nail to avoid solving the real issue

[roywiggins]

> there haven’t been studies weighing the benefits of full-body screening, Smith-Bindman said.

[kapilvt]

blood test cancer screening (free form dna), provides most of the benefits at a fraction of the costs.