The Study
Sensitivity and Specificity of Whole-body MRI for the Detection of Pediatric Malignancy
This study looked at kids who already had MRI scans and checked if the scans correctly found cancer. It says the scans were pretty good at spotting cancer when it was there — but it doesn’t prove the scan is the best way to find cancer or that it helps kids live longer.
Analysis score
Maximum 44 for a cross-sectional study.
Where the score came from
Doctors used a special kind of full-body scan to check kids who might have cancer, and it did a really good job finding it when it was there.
Where does this study sit?
Reviews of RCTs (Meta-analyses)
Max 100Randomized Trials
Max 90Reviews of Cohort Studies
Max 85Cohort Studies
Max 72Reviews of Case-Control Studies
Max 63Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional & Case Series
Max 50Expert Opinion
Max 530 / 100
Quality score
Snapshots of a population at a single point in time, or descriptions of small groups. Can identify correlations and prevalence, but cannot determine cause and effect.
Key takeaways
Summary
Based on the study abstract and findings.
- 1Yes — a 99.1% chance of being correct when the scan says no cancer means it’s very reliable for ruling out cancer in kids.
- 2The scan found 93.8% of cancers, missed 6.2%, and when it said no cancer, it was right 99.1% of the time.
Score breakdown, methodology, conflicts of interest, evidence analysis & raw study data
Publication
Journal
Journal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology
Year
2022
Authors
T. Cochran, Sachit A. Patel, Travis Kruse, E. Lyden, S. Comer, J. Ford
Related Content
Claims (4)
Using a full-body MRI scan might help find cancers in body parts where doctors don’t normally screen people, like without a regular test.
If a child gets a whole-body MRI and it comes back negative, there’s a 99.1% chance they don’t have cancer — so doctors can be very confident the child is cancer-free based on this scan.
A special kind of full-body scan called MRI with a specific setting (STIR) can find cancer in kids with very high accuracy—correctly spotting it in almost all cases where it’s there and correctly saying it’s not there when it isn’t.
Doctors might be able to use a full-body MRI scan as the first test to find cancer in kids, because one study showed it was good at spotting cancer and not giving false alarms — but this was only done in one hospital.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making health decisions.