I recently got a full-body MRI scan, even though the American College of Radiology explicitly advises against it [1].
There's now a booming industry selling full-body MRI scans directly to the public. Celebrities are endorsing them. Companies have raised hundreds of millions in funding. And the pitch is compelling: catch cancer before it's too late. In this article, I want to explain why the evidence tells a much more complicated story — why it's probably best that you don't get one yourself, and what my results actually showed.
Table of Contents
The Promise
If we can catch cancer early, surely that means it's easily treatable, right? That's the idea that makes full-body MRI scans sound so promising. One quick scan, no radiation, and we get a head-to-toe check for early signs of the hidden killer.
The logic seems airtight.
One company leading the charge is Prenuvo. They charge $2,500 per scan, and they've raised over $120 million in funding [2]. Celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Gwyneth Paltrow have publicly promoted them [3].
Kardashian called hers a "life-saving machine" in an Instagram post that got 3.4 million likes. The CEO later confirmed those celebrities were offered complimentary scans and invited to give an honest review if they wanted to [4].
The experience is designed to feel more like a luxury spa than a medical facility — you can even watch your favorite show during the scan [5].
It's no wonder that the market for scan providers is booming. Radiology practice SimonMed is doubling the number of centers offering full-body MRI scans amid what they describe as "exponential" demand growth [6].
The Controversy
But this trend has provoked a major controversy within the radiology profession.
One radiologist at Penn Medicine, Saurabh Jha, put it bluntly: "If I put my physician cap on, then I realize that this is all just humbug, bordering on quackery" [3].
That might sound surprising. Why wouldn't more information about our health always be a positive thing?
Something that happened in South Korea illustrates how things can go badly wrong. The country was faced with an alarming trend around the year 2000. The number of people diagnosed with thyroid cancer exploded. In 1999, there were 6.3 cases per 100,000 people. By 2009, that number had ballooned to nearly 48. That's more than 7 times as much [7].
And that raised an obvious question. What was going on that was suddenly causing so much thyroid cancer?
The answer isn't what you might expect. After a careful examination of the data, researchers figured out what was driving the surge. It actually didn't look like more people were getting thyroid cancer. Instead, doctors were just finding more cases that had been there all along. Why? Because a government-funded cancer screening initiative had led to the widespread use of ultrasound to screen for thyroid cancer [7].
And at this point, the story takes an interesting twist. Because we'd expect catching all these cancers early would lead to much better outcomes in terms of death rates. But it didn't. Instead, mortality rates in South Korea for thyroid cancer have remained about the same [7].
Which Screening Tests Do You Actually Need?
Full-body MRIs aren't recommended for most people — but some cancer screenings are. Get personalized screening recommendations based on your age, sex, and risk factors.
Try Health Roadmap — FreeIn other words, we haven't seen better health outcomes related to thyroid cancer in South Korea, despite aggressive screening that let doctors catch many cases they used to miss.
By 2012, around 11,000 patients had surgery for thyroid cancer — up from only about 1,000 in 2001. But again, that had no noticeable impact on mortality [8]. These surgeries weren't saving lives. Most of them were totally unnecessary.
What probably happened was that many of these cancers were so slow growing, they were never going to cause an issue during a person's lifetime. Autopsy studies routinely find these tiny thyroid tumors in around 11% of people who die of completely unrelated causes [9].
And the surgeries weren't without consequence: 11% of those operated on developed hypoparathyroidism, 2% suffered vocal cord paralysis, and most survivors required lifelong thyroid replacement therapy [10]. Plus, research from around the time when surgeries were picking up found that about 1 out of 1,000 undergoing thyroid surgery will die from the procedure itself [11].
Then there's what happened in the UK. A massive trial of over 200,000 women tested the impact of screening for ovarian and tubal cancers using blood tests and ultrasounds. But surprisingly, death rates remained the same between the group who were screened and the group who weren't. And there was a significant number of unnecessary surgeries — about 50 women underwent unnecessary surgery per 10,000 screens [12].
Overdiagnosis researcher H. Gilbert Welch put it simply: "The side effect of looking for early forms of disease is that we find, virtually, all of us have some" [13].
When it comes specifically to full-body MRI scans that aren't ordered by a doctor in response to symptoms, critics have raised two key concerns.
First, there's a high rate of finding things that don't look normal. These are called "incidental findings." One study of whole-body MRIs discovered that in about 36% of cases, there was an incidental finding [14]. But here's the concern: it often isn't clear whether that finding is anything we need to worry about. In the study, 36% of findings were classified as benign, but nearly 60% of the time, it was unclear whether they were benign or not [14].
This sets us up for problems. Those unclear incidental findings can cause significant worry, and they can trigger follow-up biopsies and surgeries that will often turn out to be totally unnecessary.
And it's not just about finding things that don't matter. A 35-year-old man named Sean Clifford paid for a Prenuvo scan. His report described his brain's blood vessels as "normal." Eight months later, he had a catastrophic stroke. Attorneys contend the radiologist missed significant narrowing in a major brain artery [15]. Clifford now suffers from partial paralysis, impaired vision, and chronic headaches [16]. The scan didn't just fail to help — it provided false reassurance.
So that's the first concern. We find lots of things that were probably not going to be an issue, but discovering them leads to unnecessary stress and medical procedures. And on top of that, we can't rely on a clear outcome even when a scan comes back normal.
The second concern is that we don't have very good data about what the benefits might be. We don't know whether whole-body MRI scans in people without symptoms actually extend lifespan. Remember the South Korea and UK cases — it's entirely possible to find more cancer and perform more operations, and yet not end up with any better health outcomes.
These are the two concerns highlighted by the American College of Radiology's statement on full-body MRIs as a screening tool. They don't recommend them. There's a high risk of unnecessary care and a lack of data showing benefit [1].
But the most extensive review of the literature on full-body MRIs was recently published. It included 10 studies and just over 9,000 participants [17]. The analysis reinforced those two important points — rates of incidental findings were high, and there is no good data on cost effectiveness [17].
But there was another data point that adds crucial context. The researchers found that these scans detect confirmed cancer 1.57% of the time [17]. The authors called it a "modest detection rate." But critics pushed back: breast cancer screening detects cancer in around 0.5% of screens, and lung cancer screening among high-risk smokers detects around 0.8-1.1%. By that comparison, 1.57% is comparable or better [18].
And they argue a big advantage with whole-body MRI scans is the ability to detect a range of cancers for which we currently lack any established screening approach [18].
Despite this pushback, both sides agree on one thing: we still need more data to see whether these preventative scans are actually cost effective and useful in normal clinical settings [18]. And this is why, even with this up-to-date data, the position of the American College of Radiology continues to make sense.
My Scan
So why in the world did I decide to get a full-body MRI myself?
There's an important difference between what an expert body recommends for the general population and what might make sense for an individual patient. Right now, when it comes to preventative full-body scans, the potential costs are relatively clear and the benefits are unknown. The lack of an endorsement from the American College of Radiology makes sense.
But for me, I'm fairly relaxed about this. Before the scan, I knew that if something was found, unless it was horrific, I'd just take a wait-and-watch approach. I could have that approach as I'm a doctor who understands the potential risks. That's the difference between a population-level recommendation and individualized patient care. Guidelines are guidelines and not absolute rules. But for the vast majority of the population, my approach wouldn't work. And that's why the American College of Radiology recommends against these scans. And that's a view that I completely agree with.
So what did I actually find out from my scan? The results came back normal.
It does not change my approach to other cancer screening programs. I'll still do bowel cancer screening, for example. And you can find the details about recommended screenings customized to you with my Health Roadmap app [19].
I plan on repeating my MRI scan in about 3 years.
Which Screening Tests Do You Actually Need?
Full-body MRIs aren't recommended for most people — but some cancer screenings are. Get personalized screening recommendations based on your age, sex, and risk factors.
Try Health Roadmap — FreeReferences
3. https://www.statnews.com/2023/08/11/kim-kardashian-full-body-mri-scans/
4. https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2023/09/29/full-body-mri
5. https://prenuvo.com/clinic-experience
7. https://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5745
8. https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc1507622
9. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9516102/
10. https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMp1409841
11. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11926912/
12. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37183782/
13. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/133686016
14. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22911290/
15. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/01/13/prenuvo-lawsuit-full-body-scan/
17. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00330-025-11976-5
18. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00330-025-12192-x
