As a follow-up to my last post on fact boxes….
A recent article in the New Yorker on Full Body MRI Scans shows some of the complexities with too much information. Here is a quote, but I urge you to read the article in its entirety.
There were no visible problems in my lungs, liver, pancreas, or brain, the nurse said. My sinuses were a little swollen, probably from allergies. There was, however, a solitary spot on my prostate. Lesions are graded on a scale from one to five, she explained, based on their likelihood of being cancerous. “Your score is a three, smack dab in the middle,” she said.
[…]
Doctors have a word for accidental findings that produce more questions than answers: incidentaloma. I knew that I probably didn’t have prostate cancer, and that most prostate cancers don’t prove deadly. But I also knew that, because it is so common, it ranks as the second leading cause of death from cancer among men.
A few days later, I sheepishly informed my primary-care doctor that I’d had a full-body MRI. She graciously ordered a blood test; a urologist recommended a dedicated prostate MRI, and, if the results weren’t too alarming, regular follow-ups after that. The immediate cascade would probably cost several thousand dollars, split between me and my insurance. I thought about the other ways in which the money could be spent: months of insulin for diabetic patients; scores of inhalers for asthmatic children; colonoscopies that are proven to find cancer and save lives. When I told Davenport, the radiologist, he shook his head and face-palmed. “Prenuvo probably views your story as a success—I view your story as a tragedy,” he said. “They’ve created in your mind this uncertainty. You were a healthy person, and now you’ve become a patient.”
https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-medicine/will-a-full-body-mri-scan-help-you-or-hurt-you