News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Cancer DNA is detectable in blood years before diagnosis. Parent comment

Re:Cancer DNA is detectable in blood years before diagnosis by unsupp0rted on Friday July 18, 2025 @05:05PM (#44609824)
What's a good way for an otherwise healthy person to screen for kidney cancer, in terms of trade-offs?

Annual MRI?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cancer DNA is detectable in blood years before diagnosis by cogman10 on Friday July 18, 2025 @05:19PM (#44609957)
IDK TBH. My wife had all the general recommended screenings. The only thing that showed potential problems was slightly elevated WBC. It was ultimately what they thought was a UTI that stayed a little too long that got us to get a CT and ultimately the diagnosis.

I do wonder if a 5 year whole body MRI or CT would be generally beneficial for the population. I don't think it needs to be Annual to have benefits.

The problem is it really isn't uncommon for your body to create random puss fill sacks all over the place. It's one thing our cancer doctor warned us about. My wife is now on a 6 month CT regimen and ultimately, they'll just ignore new lumps.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cancer DNA is detectable in blood years before diagnosis by brudgers on Friday July 18, 2025 @07:10PM (#44610808)
Talking to your doctor is the simplest thing that might work.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cancer DNA is detectable in blood years before diagnosis by jacobgkau on Friday July 18, 2025 @07:33PM (#44611003)
My NP would tell me "nothing to worry about" whether she knows what's going on or not, but that's beside the point.

GP wasn't asking what they should personally do. They were asking how the doctor would screen for it. (The truth is, the doctor can't/won't-- an annual MRI on every otherwise healthy person, for example, would be prohibitively expensive with how MRIs are currently set up-- and as another commenter pointed out, findings from those can be just as easily ignored or put off until it's too late.)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cancer DNA is detectable in blood years before diagnosis by brudgers on Friday July 18, 2025 @07:48PM (#44611115)
but that's beside the point

Being beside that hypochondric point is statistically a much healthier place to be.

The current state of medicine is the current state of medicine in the actual world.

[ Parent | on HN ]