Some companies are selling full-body scans to seemingly healthy patients, promising to give them peace of mind. Traditional medical professionals worry about the associated costs.
A preventive scan can cost anywhere from $650 to thousands of dollars. Insurance generally does not cover this service.
Healthcare professionals say there is a surge in demand for such screenings, especially among the wealthy. Behind this is the fear of death. The clinics say they can help patients detect early health problems before symptoms of major diseases such as cancer and aneurysms appear. Kim Kardashian recently shared a post on Instagram touting a scan she had at Prenuvo, a preventive MRI company.
But some radiologists and family doctors say such scans can come with other unnecessary costs and anxiety in addition to the price paid up front. If an unexpected lump is detected, it can lead to a series of follow-up tests and surgery, even if these "accidental tumors" are usually benign. These clinics generally do not deal with these issues internally, but instead flag concerns and refer patients to specialists.
In addition, while many scans take MRI and have no radiation exposure, others do expose patients to potentially harmful radiation.
"It's a bad idea," said Dr. Mirza Rahman, an internist and president of the American College of Preventive Medicine. "There's a whole host of problems that follow, including more costs and more surgeries that can lead to complications."
The ACPM has issued formal guidelines recommending against full-body scans for asymptomatic patients. "There is no documented evidence that whole-body screening is effective or cost-effective in prolongs life," the American College of Radiology said in a statement in April.
Radiologists in the Netherlands conducted a meta-analysis of studies on prophylactic whole-body magnetic screening and found that the scans yielded false positives on average 16 percent of the time.
"We often see patients come to the hospital because of a chance discovery and we have to deal with it," said Dr. Thomas Kwee, an associate professor in the department of Radiology at the University of Groningen and lead author of the analysis. "We thought, Is this really necessary?"
But health care professionals acknowledge that preventative scans aren't going away and may become more popular among affluent patients who see the extra trouble and expense of being able to screen early for anything that could radically change their lives.
Full-body scanning service
There are dozens of clinics that specialize in or offer whole-body preventive imaging services, including MRI, computed tomography (CT) scans and DEXA scans (which can measure bone density and body composition). Radiologists say imaging techniques that use radiation, such as CT scans, carry high health risks. Studies have shown that exposure to low doses of radiation slightly increases a person's risk of developing cancer. (While MRIs are less risky, they take longer and are more uncomfortable.)
"Disease is out there, and if you look for it, you can find it," said Dr. David Fein, medical director of the Princeton Longevity Center. The Princeton Longevity Center is a privately held company that offers whole body and heart CT scans with four locations, including one in Princeton, New Jersey.
Fein said he rarely encounters false positives, and when they do, most simply require a follow-up scan. Doctors say second appointments are more likely to be covered by insurance because they are incurred on the basis of the body's discovery of a problem.


Mri scans of the upper body of the human body

Taylor Dukes, 33, is a nurse practitioner who works at a functional medicine clinic in Fort Worth, Texas. She believes the scan she had at Prenuvo in 2022 saved her life. The company provided her with the service for free. Dukes said she didn't feel any symptoms at the time and didn't expect the MRI to reveal a "major finding."
Dukes was playing on the beach with her two young sons when she opened the online report. She had a mass in her brain with several possible diagnoses, one of which was an aggressive, often fatal tumor. Subsequent imaging tests and surgery to remove it showed that the mass was less aggressive but still a cancerous tumor called oligodendroglioma, Dr. Dukes said. If left untreated, the condition can lead to seizures and, in some cases, death.
"For me, early detection really saved my life," she said. Prenuvo later shared Dukes' story on social media. Prenuvo has eight clinic locations, including its headquarters in Silicon Valley.
Andrew Lacy, Prenuvo's chief executive, said in a statement: "Many of us have felt the devastating impact of cancer, which is often not diagnosed until later stages, when survival odds decline, treatment effectiveness is compromised and patients' quality of life rapidly deteriorates." He added: "The risk of screening finding inconclusive or false positive results is not new and is a problem with any radiological test."
Recommended scanning
Resten Imaoka, a radiologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Some doctors may recommend a full-body scan for asymptomatic patients with specific risk factors, including a genetic predisposition to form multiple tumors.
The Preventive Services Task Force recommends annual CT scans for lung cancer for adults ages 50 to 80 who have smoked for 20 years at a pack-a-day rate and are still smoking (or who quit within the past 15 years).
Dr. Ron Primas, a private physician who specializes in disease prevention and longevity, recommends a whole-body MRI for people with a significant family history of certain malignancies or aneurysms. He says 15 or 20 percent of his patients have already had the test. He is cautious about the potential drawbacks of such tests, including anxiety caused by unexpected tumors. He recalls a recent scan of a patient that showed a possible solid mass on the kidney. It turned out to be a benign cyst.
Still, he expects a surge in demand for these kinds of scans.
"Come September, when everyone gets back from their Hamptons vacation, they'll start doing their physicals for the year and I'm sure I'll get a lot of appointments," he said.