Comment by tptacek
5 days ago
Again, you're assuming the only downside of a routine scan is anxiety. No, the real downside is that you'll trigger needless invasive procedures.
5 days ago
Again, you're assuming the only downside of a routine scan is anxiety. No, the real downside is that you'll trigger needless invasive procedures.
How can you trigger an invasive procedure if nobody learns the result of the scan?
Obviously, the doctor does. Nobody was ever claiming that the problem with full-body scans was that patients were demanding biopsies!
Right, the problem in your model is that the doctors do! I am pointing out that this is a problem with the doctors, not the scan.
Scans are a tool, doctors are not allowed to use them rationally because it would be too expensive, so they don't use them. With an ideal doctor, patient outcomes would be better with a scan than without one, but my claim is that doctors are not ideal.
No doctor would order a full body MRI just to throw out the result in 99% of cases, because *it's too costly*
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