My former boss got lymph node cancer and had to get PET scans for years after he was in remission to make sure the cancer hadn’t spread. Why couldn’t everyone just get one PET scan every year as a routine check up instead of all the other multiple screenings we are subjected to? Especially because liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, etc, don’t have simple tests, like mammograms, to detect them?
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These scans are quite expensive. Not only is the equipment and the people operating them quite limited and expensive but you also need people who are trained in interpreting the results. These radiologists are highly skilled in what they do but even then have a hard time finding issues unless they know what to look for. The body is just too complex and random. There are lots of different lumps and abnormalities in the body which might look like cancer. This also means that there are lots of false positives in these tests. A lot of people would be told they might have cancer and then have to go through a lot of other tests in order to confirm or deny this.
The better way of detecting cancer early is for people to pay attention to their body and when they notice symptoms discuss it with their doctor. The doctor can then do further examination which might discover other symptoms and then come up with a short list of things that could cause these symptoms. Then you can do expensive scans when you know what you are looking for. This is a much cheaper and more effective way of detecting cancer and other diseases.
There is actually quite a bit of debate about regular mammograms. Most people who get a positive result of the mammogram end up going through extensive screening including biopsies in many cases even though they end up not having cancer. Meanwhile most people with breast cancer find out by noticing new lumps in their breasts and then either on their own or on a recommendation from their doctor get a mammogram. So the regular mammogram screenings does not have the same effect in early detection of breast cancer as first thought.
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