Full-body MRI scans are selling reassurance doctors say they can’t deliver

The promise of finding health problems early with a head-to-toe MRI scan is fueling a growing business.

For someone who is generally healthy, however, these scans may be more likely to cause potential harm than benefit, according to a new editorial in the science journal JAMA.

A full-body MRI scan uses magnets to create detailed images of organs and tissues across the body, to try to spot hidden diseases like cancer before symptoms appear.

Companies and concierge medical practices market these scans directly to consumers, often without a doctor’s referral, and typically they are not covered by insurance.

According to the JAMA editorial, more than 100,000 people have already had one.

The cost is steep -- around $2,500 to $4,000, according to the Radiology Society of North America.

“We wrote the article to communicate to the general public, the potential harms of performing screening outside the standard of care, using a test that is not evidence based, and not recommended by any medical society, or guideline for use in the general public,” Dr. Matthew Scott Davenport, vice chair, service chief, and professor in the department of radiology at the University of Michigan Health and one of the editorial’s authors, told ABC News.

In the JAMA editorial, Davenport and his coauthor, Dr. Scott Reeder, say no major medical group recommends whole-body MRI scans for the general population because the benefits remain unproven.

The findings may turn out to be harmless or so slow-growing they might never lead to serious health problems, according to the authors. About three in 10 people will need some kind of follow-up, the authors said.

Still, once a scan flags something, it often triggers a cascade of testing, cost and stress.

“The harms come from things like invasive testing or surgeries or follow-up of findings that are of uncertain benefit,” Davenport said.

Even when cancer is found -- about 1 to 2 out of every 100 people -- the JAMA piece points out that there is no evidence that detecting it this way helps people live longer.

Not all cancer is high risk, Davenport said. In some cases, attempts to diagnose and treat can be counterproductive.

“An example of this would be low-risk prostate cancer. It used to be aggressively treated, and now it is not,” he noted.

Prevuno, a company that offers the scans, pushed back on the idea that the scans do more harm than good.

"The risks cited by critics are overstated, and the benefits of early detection are well-documented by Prenuvo and many others,” Dr. Durand, Prenuvo's chief medical officer, said in a statement to ABC News. "The cost of early detection is a fraction of what late-stage cancer treatment demands, and a healthcare system focused on keeping people healthy, rather than forcing them to cash out on crises, is one worth fighting for."

Empowering patients, not gatekeeping information from them, is the future of preventive medicine, Durand added.

Davenport agrees that early detection matters. But he says it only works when it targets people who are likely to benefit. For everyone else, more testing may just lead to more uncertainty.

“I think the real issue here is: does the test create health value, irrespective of the price? And it is our opinion that the health value is extremely low,” Davenport said.

Dr. Crystal Joseph, MD, MS, is an anesthesiology resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.