It’s $689, HSA/FSA eligible, and includes additional support if you have a positive result.
I did the Galleri test from Grail a few years ago but it’s still $949.
No idea how the compare in terms of sensitivity and specificity though.
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I’ve been interested in doing a Galleri test, but I am procrastinating due to the high cost. I imagine this will not change for a while!
I asked Perplexity to compare them, and …
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/c9a1440f-3b9b-4ac7-91b0-4d62b2dff7cd
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I have John Hancock life insurance and they paid for the Galleri test! I did it last month.
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That is an outstanding tip for those who have life insurance!
How were the results… false positives or anything to deal with?
I had the full body MRI and it finds things, even if they are inconsequential.
Setting aside the fact that neither test does a great job of detecting most early stage cancers, when they are most curable, in broad terms it looks like 40-60% of the tests’ positive cancer signals will, upon follow-up which may involve invasive and possibly expensive tests, will fail to detect a cancer. These large grey areas certainly make the decision complicated for many.
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Looking back on your full body MRI, did you find it useful? Would you have done it knowing what you know now?
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I would 100000% recommend it IF one’s budget allows. Also, only if they are the type who won’t stress out too much if and when they find little things that are most likely innocuous. Having said that, I thought the MRI does find early stage cancers?
I hesitated spending the money on this for quite a while (same as the galleri test!), but my husband finally pushed me to do it.
I did it in Jan, and we found a spot on my pancreas, and while they weren’t that concerned, I’m very happy to know I should now monitor it.
Only a few weeks afterwards, my friend was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Needless to say, at that point, I was happy to have ‘wasted’ the money.
FYI, they recommended a CT Scan in a year to check on my pancreas. I will be looking into the pros and cons of doing that vs putting that money towards another MRI instead (less radiation and looking at other body parts as well).
If not for the spot on the pancreas, I might only do the MRI perhaps every 3 years ish? For me, I’d rather give up spending on a vacation or new clothes for the peace of mind knowing I’m hopefully not going to be surprised with late stage cancer.
To your point of needless and invasive tests, I remember a while ago, someone (I think it was KarlIT) mentioned that happens quite often. Because no one recommended anything invasive for me, it’s easy for me to say I have no regrets.
On that note, it’s now dawning on me that after following a nodule on my thyroid for a few years, they finally biopsied it when it grew. I have zero regrets on that invasive test, so?
They (blood) test for something like 48 types of cancer. Thankfully the test came back clear.
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The idea with those tests is to view them in a Bayesian framework. Basically you have some probability of having a cancer before the test and that probability will be adjusted after that test. The magnitude of the effect depends on the sensitivity for each cancer.
For Galleri from Grail It’s pretty good for 12 types of cancer but very bad for some others like Thyroid (at 0%!) but also prostate, kidney, uterus, breast, etc.
After a test your prior probability for thyroid will not change at all due to the sensitivity of 0% but will change a lot for pancreas with a sensitivity of 83.7%
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Yes. That is a good way to assess.
I’ve asked ChatGPT to compute the bayesian factors for the Galeri test and then only for the 12 most sensitive cancers.
Grail gives:
- Specificity ≈ 99.5% (false-positive rate ≈ 0.5%).
- Overall sensitivity ≈ 51.5% across all cancers and stages; ≈76.3% for 12 of the deadliest cancers.
I can paste the long answer with formulas of ChatGPT if people want the details but here are the factors.
For all the detectable cancers (sensitivity ≈ 51.5%):
- a positive result multiplies pre-test odds by ~103.
- a negative result halves the pre-test odds.
For all the 12 more detectable cancers (sensitivity ≈ 76.3%):
- A positive result multiplies pre-test odds by ~153× (very strong evidence for cancer).
- A negative result multiplies pre-test odds by ~0.24× (about a 76% reduction in odds; helpful but not exclusionary).
Not so bad in fact.
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I Want to add our possibly life-saving experience with full body scans. My husband’s urologist said his psa level was of no concern and didn’t warrant a biopsy. We did full body scans, which found full-on prostate cancer. Without the scan, we wouldn’t have known until much later at which time we suspect it would have progressed to other areas of the body (it was super close to some). The scan also found a false positive for a brain aneurysm. This caused some stress as my husband passed out in a taxi the next week, but the ER found nothing. Our feeling is the false positives are well worth it.
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