After showering in sleek private suites akin to luxury hotel rooms, patients throw on plush robes aimed to make them feel comfortable in between six hours of medical testing that includes running on a treadmill with a mask that measures aerobic fitness, a whole-body MRI scan and a bone density scan.
That was Maggie Hott’s experience back in February 2024 during her health assessment at the preventive health clinic Biograph in San Mateo. She had no idea about the serious, and potentially lifesaving, diagnosis she’d receive within a week.
The MRI scan, which can check for a host of health issues including cancers, heart issues and neurological problems, is what caught her early-stage pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of cancer in the United States, with a five-year survival rate of 13%. The outlook was better for Hott. Biograph caught the cancer at Stage 1, which has a five-year survival rate closer to 44%. Hott’s tumor was a little over 2 centimeters in size, while most people are not diagnosed with this type of cancer until the tumor is larger…