Despite the lack of endorsements by the medical community, it’s hard to ignore some of the “success stories” that have come out of these scans. Last year, Emmy Awards executive producer Dionne Harmon revealed that a Prenuvo scan she had after seeing Kardashian’s endorsement detected her stage 3 lung cancer; Harmon had no symptoms at the time. Kardashian revealed that her scan detected a small brain aneurysm, which led to her getting other brain scans. (It’s not clear if she needed medical intervention beyond that.)
Doctors are still wary of commercial full-body scans.
Many argue that most people just don’t need these scans. “The whole-body MRI is indicated and makes sense in those that have known high-risk for diseases that are better detected by MRI—most tumors,” says Alexander McKinney, MD, chair of radiology at the University of Miami Health System. “However, the thing most people are five to seven times more likely to die from is cardiovascular causes, for which CT is better to detect those risk factors.” (Again, while some commercial scanning companies allow you to tack on CT scans, they’re not often built into the original packages.)
Breast cancer is also not typically detected through these scans, points out Richard Reitherman, MD, PhD, radiologist and medical director of breast imaging at Memorial Care Breast Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA. “Since whole-body MRI is not a contrast-enhanced study, it is especially not effective in screening for breast cancer,” he explains.
Dr. Reitherman also has concerns that some people will assume they’re healthy after having a commercial full-body scan and, as a result, skip scientifically validated screening tests. “The population that uses whole-body MRI as a substitute for specific proven screening tests such as contrast-enhanced breast MRI or CT scanning for lung cancer is at significant risk,” he says.
It is possible that a commercial full-body scan could detect a serious underlying health condition, says Dr. Hawk. “But there is an absence of conclusive evidence that it improves outcomes for anyone,” he adds. “Scientists measure benefit in terms of reduction of mortality. None of that exists at this point.”
Dr. Hawk also has concerns about the initial price of these scans, along with costs that someone may face if the scan detects something that may not be a big deal. “Any time a patient is in a screening program,” he says, “you run the risk of finding something that may not be consequential in terms of improving the quality or length of someone’s life.”
These scans may also miss the full picture of a person’s health, Dr. McKinney says. “Whole-body MRI sounds sexy and can pick up most—not all—larger, actionable tumors and dementia, but it also tends to pick up many benign things that don’t need to be worked up,” he explains. “CT screening—lung, heart, vascular, stroke risks—picks up things that most of the population is much more likely to die from.”
If you have the budget for a full-body scan and are okay with the possibility of unnecessary follow-up scans, Dr. Hawk says you’re unlikely to be harmed by trying it out. “Indeed, it may find disease at an earlier stage and permit strategies to prevent the development of cancer,” he says. “There is that potential benefit. We just don’t have data yet on how beneficial this will be. In the future, I hope these are proven to be impactful and helpful.”
