Yes, however, finding an early symptom, particularly a decade early, would be an incredible find.
If we could detect pancreatic cancer early, for example, would could go from a 7% survival to 90% rate.
If we could detect pancreatic cancer early, for example, would could go from a 7% survival to 90% rate.
Early detection would still be valuable for other reasons, though.
Like if everyone got regular MRI scans (I know, expensive, but it's a hypothetical) could we do the same thing?
I’m under the impression MRI scans have two main issues with them:
1. A trained radiologist can still miss small tumors, and it is in fact quite easy to miss them. The body is complicated and all sort stuff of weirdnesses can occur that are not harmful.(eg. Benign tumors)
2. It is possible that the discovery of a tumor doesn’t mean cancer. This was a debate in breast cancer treatments- a lot of heartache and suffering can occur from a cancer scare and there has been existing controversy regarding early testing given this.
https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2480762/radiation-induced...
That’s a lot of words to say, take that paper with a huge grain of salt.
>take that paper with a huge grain of salt.
Too much salt isn't healthy either ;)
The same thing is true with thyroid tumors. A lot of people got their thyroids removed because they had tumors called "thyroid cancer", and now the consensus is that these tumors, while not completely benign, are so slow-growing that it's not worth it to remove them in most cases. Many times, people were only found to have these tumors after they had died (of something else).
Actually, I think that scientists are wondering about this as well [1] [2]. If they determine that regular whole-body MRI checkups are a good idea, I guess that demand for cheap MRI machines will surge. People who'd invested into industrialized production lines for MRI machines would make a lot of money. Possible startup idea?