5 ms·

Anecdotal evidence to confirm: I had two false alarms from an unrelated MRI scan, and beside wasting a lot of time on diagnosing them - it was also extremely st

by rembal 7mo ago

Anecdotal evidence to confirm: I had two false alarms from an unrelated MRI scan, and beside wasting a lot of time on diagnosing them - it was also extremely stressful. My father is a part of "full body PET scan every 3 years" program as part of post - cancer treatment, and it worked twice: early detected lung and prostate tumors, both removed.

p0pularopinion 7mo ago
> My father is a part of "full body PET scan every 3 years" program as part of post - cancer treatment, These treatments are wonderful and it is great that they exist. But many people fail to understand the difference in terms of pretest probability, etc. I can absolutely see the heavy psychological impact pending biopsy results may have. People are quick to discount these issues when you raise them as a concern, but only if they never went through this stress themselves
- mcbain 7mo ago
  I have multiple scans a year. "Scanxiety" is real.
  - lostlogin 7mo ago
    Multiple PETs?
    - mcbain 7mo ago
      Yes, with MRI brain too. I was on 4/year, but that number is reducing as time goes on without recurrence.
      - lostlogin 7mo ago
        Sorry, I missed a key detail. What you are describing isn’t the ‘whole body mri’ I’m referencing by to. People in high risk situations like multiple myeloma, or various metastic diseases, or system conditions are a whole different category and there is clear benefit to screening them. It sounds like you have had a tough time.
  - vasco 7mo ago
    I do once a year and have skipped 2 because of that. I've since resumed but for a while I convinced myself I'd rather not know.
  - robocat 7mo ago
    > Scanxiety Cute written word - even though two words pronounced completely differently at join (an versus añ). Which do you pronounce correctly the scan or the anxiety? [scan]xiety or [sk]anxiety
    - hbs18 7mo ago
      As a non-native English speaker, pronouncing it scan-xiety (sken-ZAHyetee) feels correct.
    - mcbain 7mo ago
      The former. It doesn't quite roll off the tongue, but with my (Australian) accent the difference is minor.
      - robocat 7mo ago
        Kiwi here - I'll use the word with my friends in future because a label does help.
ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
> My father is a part of "full body PET scan every 3 years" program as part of post - cancer treatment, and it worked twice: early detected lung and prostate tumors, both removed. My mum gets scanned a little more frequently than that, following treatment for an inoperable tumour in her lung around five years ago. During treatment she was getting scanned every three months or so, and it was remarkable watching this thing go from the size of a tangerine, to actually expanding a bit and looking "fuzzy" once the drugs kicked in, to being the size of a plum, then the size of a grape attached with a little thin thread of tissue, to being a thing the size of a pea. Now there's a tiny ripple of scar tissue that no-one wants to investigate further, because if it's not doing anything let's not poke at it. There is a roughly pea-sized "thing" on her adrenal gland that was a bit worrying because anything like that is going to get intimately involved with your lymphatic system and then it's going to metastasise like hell. But it neither got bigger nor smaller in the nearly six years since the first scan, so it can't be that important. This is one of the great things about the NHS, especially here in Scotland where we have (possibly as a result of the weirdly high levels of cancer) some of the best oncology services in the world. If we'd lived in the US, the insurance companies would have taken one look at an 83-year-old about to become a grandmother and sent her home with a bottle of morphine to die. As it is, she's doing very well and got to see both her grandchildren start school.
- codethief 7mo ago
  > in Scotland where we have (possibly as a result of the weirdly high levels of cancer) Interesting, I had no idea and just looked this up[0]: > Scotland had the highest overall incidence (446 for men and 379 for women per 100 000), and Wales had the second highest rate (450 and 366 per 100 000), compared with 394 and 338 per 100 000 in England and 394 and 345 per 100 000 in Northern Ireland. This would make Scotland rank 3rd in the table on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cancer_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cancer_ra... . PS: Glad to hear your mom is doing well! [0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1939786/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1939786/
  - ErroneousBosh 7mo ago

by rembal 7mo ago

p0pularopinion 7mo ago

> My father is a part of "full body PET scan every 3 years" program as part of post - cancer treatment, These treatments are wonderful and it is great that they exist. But many people fail to understand the difference in terms of pretest probability, etc. I can absolutely see the heavy psychological impact pending biopsy results may have. People are quick to discount these issues when you raise them as a concern, but only if they never went through this stress themselves

mcbain 7mo ago
I have multiple scans a year. "Scanxiety" is real.
- lostlogin 7mo ago
  Multiple PETs?
  - mcbain 7mo ago
    Yes, with MRI brain too. I was on 4/year, but that number is reducing as time goes on without recurrence.
    - lostlogin 7mo ago
      Sorry, I missed a key detail. What you are describing isn’t the ‘whole body mri’ I’m referencing by to. People in high risk situations like multiple myeloma, or various metastic diseases, or system conditions are a whole different category and there is clear benefit to screening them. It sounds like you have had a tough time.
- vasco 7mo ago
  I do once a year and have skipped 2 because of that. I've since resumed but for a while I convinced myself I'd rather not know.
- robocat 7mo ago
  > Scanxiety Cute written word - even though two words pronounced completely differently at join (an versus añ). Which do you pronounce correctly the scan or the anxiety? [scan]xiety or [sk]anxiety
  - hbs18 7mo ago
    As a non-native English speaker, pronouncing it scan-xiety (sken-ZAHyetee) feels correct.
  - mcbain 7mo ago
    The former. It doesn't quite roll off the tongue, but with my (Australian) accent the difference is minor.
    - robocat 7mo ago
      Kiwi here - I'll use the word with my friends in future because a label does help.

ErroneousBosh 7mo ago

> My father is a part of "full body PET scan every 3 years" program as part of post - cancer treatment, and it worked twice: early detected lung and prostate tumors, both removed. My mum gets scanned a little more frequently than that, following treatment for an inoperable tumour in her lung around five years ago. During treatment she was getting scanned every three months or so, and it was remarkable watching this thing go from the size of a tangerine, to actually expanding a bit and looking "fuzzy" once the drugs kicked in, to being the size of a plum, then the size of a grape attached with a little thin thread of tissue, to being a thing the size of a pea. Now there's a tiny ripple of scar tissue that no-one wants to investigate further, because if it's not doing anything let's not poke at it. There is a roughly pea-sized "thing" on her adrenal gland that was a bit worrying because anything like that is going to get intimately involved with your lymphatic system and then it's going to metastasise like hell. But it neither got bigger nor smaller in the nearly six years since the first scan, so it can't be that important. This is one of the great things about the NHS, especially here in Scotland where we have (possibly as a result of the weirdly high levels of cancer) some of the best oncology services in the world. If we'd lived in the US, the insurance companies would have taken one look at an 83-year-old about to become a grandmother and sent her home with a bottle of morphine to die. As it is, she's doing very well and got to see both her grandchildren start school.

codethief 7mo ago
> in Scotland where we have (possibly as a result of the weirdly high levels of cancer) Interesting, I had no idea and just looked this up[0]: > Scotland had the highest overall incidence (446 for men and 379 for women per 100 000), and Wales had the second highest rate (450 and 366 per 100 000), compared with 394 and 338 per 100 000 in England and 394 and 345 per 100 000 in Northern Ireland. This would make Scotland rank 3rd in the table on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cancer_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cancer_ra... . PS: Glad to hear your mom is doing well! [0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1939786/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1939786/
- ErroneousBosh 7mo ago