Can full-body scans give you peace of mind?
Imagine a scene from Star Trek where a machine painlessly scans your entire body for disease in less than 20 seconds. You may walk away knowing you are disease free. Or, you may discover that something is wrong.
Some claim this space-age technology is now possible through a test called a full-body scan, which is actually a computed tomography (CT or CAT) scan of the entire body. One hundred times clearer than an ordinary x-ray, a CT scan takes detailed pictures of the organs, blood vessels, abdominal cavity, bones and spinal cord.
While physicians have long used CT scans as a tool for diagnosing diseases such as cancer, there is a trend to use CT scans for detecting disease before symptoms occur.
Jay Rosenblatt, MD, staff radiologist and head of the CT section at Virtua Memorial Hospital, says that although most innovations in health care are driven by science, this is not the case with full body scans. "Full body CT scans were marketed in response to the general population's desire for a quick, easy screening method for disease. People are looking for a way to predict future illnesses."
Edwin Wilson, MD, chief of radiology at Virtua Memorial Hospital, describes a CT scan's true value. "It's an elegant tool for finding abnormalities and diagnosing disease in people who are having specific symptoms. This may not be the case when used to scan the body of an otherwise healthy person. While it is reported that a full-body scan may find non-cancerous or benign growths in approximately 20 people out of every 100 scanned, only one out of those 100 scanned will actually have cancer."
Edward Petrella, MD, chief of radiology at Virtua West Jersey Hospitals, explains that findings discovered on a full-body scan frequently require a long line of tests that could be invasive. "As a result, many people go through the expense, stress and risk of additional testing to track down insignificant findings. Worse yet, these tests can give a false sense of security, leading a patient to ignore significant symptoms while thinking they have been cleared of serious medical problems."
While full-body scans sound like a good thing on the surface, Dr. Petrella, says: "The signature of a good screening method is proof that it prolongs life and does no harm. Statistically, this has not been proven for full-body scans."