The Rise of the 'Just in Case' MRI

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/22/business/dealbook/full-body-mri.html

by bonsai_spool • 8 months ago

5 3 8 months ago

pinewurst• 8 months ago

ggm• 8 months ago

The thing is for every misdiagnosed spleen cancer, there are hundreds of unnecessary "the MRI confirmed the ultrasound there's nothing there" outcomes.

Health economics is littered with this kind of thing. Any attempt to suggest "maybe we should do less" invites the examples of when we should have done more.

Complicating things is the other story of frequent women's underdiagnosis of serious pelvic and related issues, written down to crybaby overreaction to period pain. So, there's that side of the ledger too: finding the balance point between over testing and under diagnosing is hard. I have friends who had to fight to get a hysterectomy, with PCOS and related problems initially dismissed at emergency.

(Has cyst on kidney. Has discussed with urologist. Would like better central records management so another ultrasound tech doesn't go panic mode)

bonsai_spool• 8 months ago

Unrelatedly, I found this recently published paper whose abstract is a good counterpoint (in 1,506 incidental MRI findings, only one of their patients had cancer): https://www.ajronline.org/doi/10.2214/AJR.25.33559

The Rise of the 'Just in Case' MRI

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