What is a full body CT scan?

What’s the latest rage in the medical community? It is not growth hormones, or anti-aging techniques. It is not new plastic surgery to get rid of those hard-earned laugh lines. It is a procedure called “full-body CT scan" and it is a procedure whose time has come.

Today many people are requesting that their doctors run this full body scan on them. Healthy, asymptomatic people are requesting “the scan.” Radiologist Harvey Eisenberg feels that the test could revolutionize health care. Anomalies in the body of a healthy person can be picked up and life style changes can be made before a costly, life-threatening problem arises. Eisenberg practices at the HealthView Center for Preventative Medicine and business is booming in their neck of the woods. In the past 2½ years the center has scanned over 15,000 bodies! But, not everyone thinks this procedure is a good idea.

Eisenberg says the opposite! He believes that we need to shift the way we think about medicine and health from reactive to proactive. Usually by the time a disease is diagnosed using traditional medical logic, it is a matter of recovering lost ground. With the full body scan, serious diseases can be nipped in the bud. It is not to be used as the only diagnostic tool, but in addition to the compliment of tests that people receive as part of their ongoing healthcare.

What is the full body scan? - A full body scan is a test done by a CT (computed tomography) scanner. It is not an MRI. A CT scanner is one part x-ray, and three parts computer. It produces a very clear 3-D image of the inside of a person’s body. The actual procedure involves a person lying on a table in a machine that is not an enclosed space, with arms over head. The table moves your body; there is no enclosure and no needles, just holding your breath. The procedure takes roughly 10 minutes and scans a patient from the top of the chest to the bottom of the pelvis.

What can the CT scan pick up? — The most common finding has been coronary artery disease. Also detected have been kidney cancer, lung cancer and breast cancer, however, the scan cannot rule out the presence of breast cancer, colon cancer or prostate cancer.

So what are all the dissenting opinions about the total body scan? One obvious factor would be the effect the knowledge of a serious, life-shortening disease could have on your life. Once you have the knowledge, good or bad, it is there to stay. But in most cases early detection of cancers and heart diseases can only prove beneficial, placing time on the side of the patient.

Another negative seen by scan critics is that once you find an anomaly of any kind, it must be treated. Maybe the condition would never develop any further, while the possible invasive treatments and further testing could pose additional and costly problems. Although the proponents of this testing extol its virtues as being cost inhibitive -- quite the opposite could prove to be true. It could mean more tests and procedures that would have to be done. The debate rages on as to whether the test is a prevention movement that will save lives and ultimately cut health-care costs, or just another way to fatten the pockets of those in the medical field by requiring more medical tests and follow-up visits? Is it medical make-work that wastes resources and leads to unnecessary worry and follow-up tests and could end up harming patients? Are the tests reliable or do they miss real problems while finding ones that later prove false?

Despite all the negative press, as a lay person, I believe that the full body scans are the wave of the future. People want noninvasive tests, painless tests that can eliminate fear of future problems for them. Like the mammogram, the pap smear, the heart stress tests, psa tests -- the full body scan will soon be as common place and prescribed as any other medical tests. Now I know what I want for Christmas!