New St. Pete clinic to offer full-body MRIs

According to the University of Chicago, only 14% of cancers are detected as a result of regular screenings. Said Michael Andoniades, founder of TrueScan: “Our mission is to eliminate the other 86%.”

TrueScan, a St. Petersburg clinic offering clinical-grade full-body MRIs, takes its first patients on Dec. 16 at 5015 4th Street N. TrueScan will offer patients a look at every part of their body and a peek into their medical future. Full-body MRIs have become popular in the last few years as a preventative diagnostic, and TrueScan’s will check for more than 500 potential issues in a patient, including many cancers for which regular screening is not prescribed.

“I’ve always been interested in medicine – my mom is actually a physician and we’re working together on this,” said Andoniades, who founded TrueScan following a stint in tech. While discussing  ways that technology could better impact her medical practice, they realized offering early detection using advanced imaging could make a difference in patients’ lives.

“We knew some people who had detected cancer late in life when they were symptomatic,” he explained. “I thought to myself, there must be a better way of doing this – of catching issues before the symptoms arrive.

“The reason we chose MRI as our modality of choice is that it’s really good at looking at soft tissue, so we can detect many cancers at stage I.”

Patients whose cancer is detected at stage I, the earliest stage, typically have far higher five-year survival rates than those who are detected at stage IV, when the cancer has typically metastasized to other parts of the body. As an example, he offered that kidney cancer, which is rarely screened for, has just a 15% stage-IV five-year survival rate, which is often when symptoms present themselves in an otherwise-healthy patient. Caught at stage I, however, the survival rate jumps to 93%. 

MRIs also have additional advantages, according to Andoniades, including being non-invasive, requiring no dyes or contrast, and the fact that they don’t use radiation.

TrueScan, 5015 4th Street N., St. Petersburg.

Patients at TrueScan require a referral from a physician, which can come either from a patient’s own family doctor or a network of physicians provided. Some doctors are cool on preventative MRIs, with one University of Michigan radiologist noting that 15-30% of full-body MRIs may have “incidental findings,” such as benign tumors or conditions that don’t require intervention. These can prompt medical anxiety and result in false positives or over-treatment of minor issues.

TrueScan takes steps to avoid these issues. Staff will use diffusion-weighted imaging to maximize the accuracy of their scans, including the determination of whether a tumor or lesion is a potential concern, noted Antoniades. But once something is detected it can be monitored, and having the full-body MRI gives a baseline for the patient’s body, which can be useful when comparing it to subsequent scans.

This is especially true for people with predisposition for problems like cancer, or patients suffering from unexplained symptoms. “A lot of times you’ll hear stories of people going doctor to doctor trying to figure out what’s wrong and nobody gives any answers,” Andoniades said.

As TrueScan gives clinical readings, they have experienced doctors on staff from a variety of fields, including cardio-thoracic surgeon Dr. Robert Lazzara, neuro-radiologist Dr. Glenn Call and family practitioner Dr. Janice Summers. This ensures that any findings are properly contextualized, and patients given direction on next steps.

Patients at TrueScan are welcomed into a sleek, modern office and given a private dressing room to prepare for their imaging. The MRI typically lasts 60 minutes, but TrueScan offers a state of the art entertainment system with Spotify, Netflix, YouTube and more so patients can watch or listen to whatever they like. Once the scans are complete, they receive the results in 7-10 days along with a consultation with a TrueScan doctor. 

To Andoniades, this is the first step to changing preventative medicine forever. He anticipates that one day, full-body MRIs will be a critical part of annual wellness visits. 

“By investing in your health today, you’re taking a proactive step that can make all the difference tomorrow. A full-body MRI can be life-altering.”