“Galleri is the first-of-its-kind multi-cancer early detection test—a test that looks for a signal shared by more than 50+ types of cancer with a single blood test. It is a screening test and does not diagnose cancer, further testing is required to confirm cancer.”
The other day I realized how many people from my former company had died of pancreatic cancer. I thought, that’s crazy, the high percentage of people, maybe it’s because we’ve all had high levels of exposure to dangerous goods. Yet when I looked into how many Americans had pancreatic cancer in their lifetime, it’s one in 56 men, and one in 60 women. What? This deadly cancer is incredibly common, and is usually diagnosed far too late because of the lack of symptoms.
I started looking into this new Galleri early cancer detection test that tests for 50 cancers, including breast, liver, lung, stomach, prostate, colon, bone, melanoma, and pancreatic cancer. The cost is $949, and is typically not covered by insurance. It seems worth it to me to take this blood test once every five years or so, in case you could get a heads up on early cancer detection. Has anyone taken this test, or know someone who has?
I’m very skeptical that this test is as accurate as the makers say. The above seems to confirm that. The scariest part is the alarming rate of false positives.
I had read that there were false positives, and certainly many false negatives, as it detects a much smaller number of stage 1 cancers. But the false positive is only 0-5%. Is that so bad, and out of line with any particular sort of testing?
I’m sure this sort of testing will just get more accurate with time, and you certainly can’t trust that if the test comes back with no cancer indicators, that it could still be wrong, and false positives would cause anxiety and unnecessary testing. But if it catches something that you otherwise would not have caught until far later, I’d think it would be worth it. I wonder if it’s worth putting this into the category of screening mammograms. Now they say you don’t have to do them as often, as they want to save money, and it won’t prevent a large number of women from getting breast cancer anyways. However. If you don’t care about saving the health care system money, and you think it’s worth saving the small number of lives, in particular if it’s yours, then it would be worth doing the screening.
My husband asked his doctor about it, and the dr said it was legit. I also think it’s a great idea, and it is on my “to do” list to get done. Money aside, I would think one would want to have it done yearly.
Of course, money does intrude into the decision. On a population basis (as Medicare or an insurance company or an employer would consider), does this testing save more lives per dollar than something else? On an individual basis, your own financial and health situations can affect your decision.
Would need to know if this testing translates into life extended or increased cures. If it isn’t detecting early stage cancer very well, then it may not be extending life span. Just more people living with the diagnosis of cancer.
It is intriguing to me to look at the chart showing sensitivity of true positives. This test has differing sensitivities for every cancer it tests for, and they say that most aggressive cancers tend to release more cell-free DNA into the bloodstream at early stages, making them more likely to be detected. For example, liver cancer shows a 93.5% sensitivity, pancreatic is 83.7%, prostate is only 11.2% and thyroid is 0%.
Nobody in my family has ever had cancer, but I have particular concerns as my telomere test showed that I have extremely long telomeres. That is not good, causing an increased risk for cancer, and more aggressive types of cancer.
Sometimes I wonder if having all this knowledge about my risk is not good. I don’t worry about it, but I know. Maybe ignorance is bliss.
@bluebayou no neither of my oncologists tests for breast cancer markers. I believe they do to track progress of treatment for metastasis.
I had both breasts removed so I really have no way to check for spread. Many of us have bone pain (arthritis, fractures in my case) so that is not a way to tell. It seems many find cancer spread through random imaging for something else. I can’t do contrast so even that is unlikely.
IMO, Grail should be paying people for participation in their clinical trials, not charging them $950.
If I had some extra $$$ to spend, I would not spend it on an LDT with a questionable value. I’d go for the whole body MRI. There are companies that do that. A couple of times I had a scan, the radiologist flagged an unrelated issue that needed to be checked out. One was nothing, the other was more serious (not cancer, but it could have been!).
Just be aware that over diagnosis is not something to taken lightly. Recommendations against screening too often or too young are not really about saving money, but about reducing unnecessary treatment for disease that would never progress or cause any issues. It feels neat and tidy to think that catching and treating cancer early will save lives and reduce treatment later, but unfortunately that’s often not true. Many “early” cancers will never grow or cause clinical disease and catching them “early” simply means unnecessary surgery, chemo, radiation or simply anxiety over something that will never become clinically significant. Aggressive cancers that grow quickly and kill often arise seemingly out of nowhere and cannot be caught early. I’m not saying it’s never possible to catch a cancer that is about to become a problem and nip it early, but over diagnosis - with attendant morbidity and occasional death from unneeded treatment- is a real problem with tests like these. I’d want to see real data that the test saves lives before I’d take it.
My husband and I recently got MRI whole body scans and we are now following up on various things that may turn out to be serious or may turn out to be nothingburgers. We figured even if watchful waiting is the appropriate next step having a baseline is a good idea. We talked about the blood tests recently - not convinced the technology is quite there yet.
This is a discussion I’ve had with our PCP several times since moving to our current location. He pushes screening for everything and I resist. My GYN and I have had similar conversations, but at least she listens and seems to understand my POV. I’ve had far too much necessary surgery, often with poor outcomes, and have no desire to undergo more surgery for something that’s unlikely to kill me before I die of old age.
