My immediate family all had one cancer or another. I wonder when it will be my turn, or if there is already a cancer growing that I don’t know about. Does a PET scan light up for all cancers? Would I be able to get one for no good reason? If I had to pay for it, what is the ballpark cost?
Well, you need a good reason, to start. You can’t just walk in somewhere and ask for a PET/CT (Normally, the two scan modalities are done at the same time and computationally fused into one set of images) scan as at a minimum, they need to spin up a batch of radioactive tracer.
I suppose you could find an oncologist and an imaging center that’s willing to do it for cash without insurance and without much concern for dosing you with a radioactive substance. Bring a lot of cash - my husband’s last PET/CT was billed at $8,050, and that’s not including another couple hundred to the radiologist to “read” the images and write an interpretation.
As for what it “lights up” for, PET/CT is looking for glucose metabolism. The idea is that tumors will be hot spots of metabolism outside of the normal places.
You should also be aware that taking a PET scan (or a CT scan) increases your chance of getting cancer.
The drawbacks include costs (no insurance company would pay for one without a solid indication) and the likelihood of false positives.
There are plenty of situations where a scan will “light up” when no tumor (benign or malignant) is present, including inflammatory/infectious processes. You don’t want to undergo an invasive procedure for, say, a resolving asymptomatic Histoplasma granuloma in a thoracic lymph node (very common in parts of the Midwest).
If people fearful of cancer got PET scans on a routine basis, health costs would skyrocket (to pay for the imaging, the followup testing and biopsies/excisions, and the charges for handling complications caused by the testing and invasive procedures).
Even having the cash is not a guarantee they will do the procedure on request.
When I was having my gallbladder removed, I asked the surgeon if he’d vasectomize me while I was out. He said that although he did vasectomies, doing one as an “add on” just wasn’t done. His insurer would laugh at him if I were to sue over the situation.
I offered to pay him cash, under the table to snip me. No way. I offered an extra hundred bucks, still no way. He repeated “it just isn’t done” .
“But didn’t you have your gallbladder out before I was born?” - Kayaker Jr
Did you try changing it to schedule as an elective vasectomy, and add an emergency cholecystectomy? 
No. Below is a link to other reasons why it’s not a good idea.
Can you elaborate on this? It is possible your family is carrying a genetic mutation that increases the risk of cancer, in which case a genetic test might be a better option. What cancers, and what ages of diagnosis?
I’m having an FDG-PET/CT right now. Due to an insurance issue, I had the sign a financial waiver. FYI, the cost of the procedure was listed as $15,804.
Not a medical person, but I can offer this tale. Some years back, my mother’s S.O. had a PT scan done in January shortly after Christmas–there was a family history of various cancers, he had a history of pancreatitis, and he was having a lot of pain. Nothing showed up. Around the end of April, as he continued to have worsening pain, the test was repeated. He had stage IV pancreatic cancer that had already spread into his liver. Yeah, that’s a fast-growing cancer, but in this case the clinic even knew where to look and they still didn’t find it. I don’t know how much the technology has improved in the last few years, but I don’t know that I’d find a negative scan all that reassuring.
I’m thinking they were just the typical cancers. My brother had Hodgkin’s in his twenties*, my father had prostate in his 60s and my mom was officially undiagnosed but had a tumor in her breast and cancer throughout her body either from that spreading or from other cancer (she smoked for significant lengths of time).
I’m not super-concerned either way, but I have an idle curiosity about whether something is already afoot.
*I’m thinking there was something off about our high school. It was very small but my brother’s friend had Hodgkin’s and a brain tumor, my best friend had leukemia, and another classmate died of cancer (not sure what kind). It seems like a lot for a small school in a short span of time.
You can get one of those “full body scans” for around $800 although the FDA says they’re not helpful (WebMD says the same).
No, that doesn’t sound like something to be concerned about. Just make sure you get a colon cancer screening at age 50, don’t smoke, and stop worrying about it.
There are very few cancers for which early detection has actually been proven to make much difference. Most screening tests generally fall into disrepute when they are studied in greater detail.
More on the limitations of PET scans (which include lighting up in areas of chronic pancreatitis as well as pancreatic tumors) here.
“In general, false-positive FDG uptake (FDG is the tracer substance) can occur in PET/CT in relation to granulomatous disease or inflammation. Some benign tumors, such as colonic adenomas and fibroids, may also demonstrate intense FDG uptake. False negatives can arise in tumors that are either small or non-FDG-avid. These include some neuroendocrine tumors, renal cell carcinoma, and certain types of lymphoma. Many previous studies have demonstrated that PET is more specific than CT for staging of posttreatment lymphoma patients.[29] However, there are subtypes of lymphoma that are poorly avid on PET, including, most notably, marginal zone lymphoma (of which mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue [MALT] lymphoma is a subtype) and peripheral T-cell lymphoma. Therefore, CT may play a more important role in the staging of these patients at diagnosis and follow-up.[30] Some mucinous and low-grade tumors are also known to be poorly FDG-avid.[5] High neighboring background activity can also lead to obscuration of FDG uptake.”