Why is it so easy to find cancer through cancer screening in Japan?

When I hear people around me talk about someone who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, my first reaction is: Wasn’t it discovered in previous physical examinations?

On the contrary, I have a physical examination every year, and all indicators are "normal."

Then why can’t it be found out?

It’s not that cancer is too violent, but that domestic physical examinations have not reached a level of precision and rigor. Physical examinations are just a formality and seek psychological comfort.

Domestic doctors know better that ordinary physical examination cannot completely screen out early cancer. There is only one criterion for measuring the quality of physical examination, which is the detection rate and examination effect of "medical-grade physical examination".

When it comes to medical-grade physical examinations, I have to blow a rainbow fart again. In terms of the precision and rigor of physical examinations, Japan is definitely the best in Asia.

Since 2004, Japan has begun to implement the "Third Ten-Year Comprehensive Anti-Cancer Strategy";

its precision cancer screening is often measured in millimeters and microns;

For liver cancer and lung cancer, the cure rates for early diagnosis and treatment in Japan can reach 60% and 78%, respectively.

Nowadays, more and more health-conscious Chinese people go to Japan for cancer screening. So what are the advantages of Japan’s precision physical examination?

One-to-one service

There are two types of physical examinations in China: hospital physical examinations and commercial physical examinations.

The biggest problem with hospital physical examinations is the large number of people and scattered departments. Most items require reservations, and you have to queue up even if you don't make an appointment. One physical examination is time-consuming and labor-intensive, so commercial physical examinations have emerged to fill the vacancies.

Commercial physical examinations are unreliable. Consumers don’t know whether the machine is of medical grade, and consumers don’t know whether the doctor is a professional with rich clinical experience. Therefore, commercial physical examinations become just a formality to prove employment. Not surprising.

Japan implements a comprehensive reservation system. Hospital physical examination institutions only receive 10-20 customers a day, giving them sufficient time to provide detailed examination services to customers.

The physical examination on the same day will be a one-to-one or many-to-one service, which avoids wasting time in queuing and does not miss any organ of the body and any angle of screening.

Because medical resources in Japan are relatively evenly distributed, hospitals generally do not become very crowded.

After the completion of each item of the physical examination, the physical examination center will send the examination data to the medical center for review by the general practitioner (examining doctor--reviewing physician--dean for confirmation) and at least 3 attending doctors. Rigorous collective diagnosis by the team.

Finally, the physical examination data results together with detailed analysis are bound into a thick report book and flown across the strait from Japan to your hands in China.

Leading the world in cancer screening

Japan is a country with a very complete medical and health system. It has a very complete cancer prevention system and equipment, and has multiple examinations for the same cancer. This method can detect early and early cancer cells at the micron level.

Japan now maintains the world record for detecting early-stage cancers of 5 mm (currently, cancer health examinations in various countries around the world can only detect cancers above 15 mm).

The Japanese have always had a strong sense of urgency. In the field of cancer prevention, they have implemented three 10-year anti-cancer plans since 1984, and have now entered the third 10-year anti-cancer strategic plan. . As of 2008, Japan's national cancer cure rate reached 68%, ranking first in the world.

And such a high cure rate is better than the early detection of cancer.

Japan’s early cancer screening health examination uses "PET-CT" as its core technology, combined with ultrasound, MRI, and biochemical examinations for precise screening, which can detect 300 common cancers throughout the body. Various early-stage cancers are thoroughly screened at one time.

The entire physical examination system is divided into 6 levels. Each level is in-depth and multiple methods are combined to prevent cancer cells from hiding.

Level 1: Whole-body physical examination, which helps determine the appearance of tumors by examining multiple physical indicators of the body.

Level 2: Biochemical indicator examination, which helps determine signs of tumors by examining multiple biochemical indicators of body organs.

Level 3: Tumor markers, using 21 markers three times more than the seven common tumor markers, to discover cancer information more accurately.

Level 4: Equipment examination, using high-precision medical equipment such as CT, MRI, B-ultrasound, barium meal, etc. to detect cancers in different organs in a targeted manner.

Level 5: Whole body screening, PET produces personalized contrast agent on site to scan active cancer cells throughout the body.

Level 6: Clinical examination, consultation with Japanese experts with rich clinical experience to achieve early detection and early treatment.

Japan’s cancer screening is famous for its high detection rate, and even tumors as small as one millimeter cannot escape.

Data show that the five-year cancer survival rate in Japan has now reached 62.1%, which is almost as high as the 66% in the United States and twice the five-year cancer survival rate in China of 30.9%.

High-end equipment leads the world

Japan’s number of high-end medical devices ranks first in the world, look at the data:

According to statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) , Japan has 92.6 computed tomography (CT) equipment per million people, far more than the 32.2 units in the United States;

Japan has about 40 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment per million people. Taiwan, compared with 28 in the United States and only 7 in Germany.

Some people have said that we also have high-end instruments of the same level in our country.

I don’t deny this at all.

The instrument is high-end hardware, so the technology can be considered high-end software.

It would be impossible not to mention PET CT used for cancer screening.

The PET-specific development technology made in Japan is world-leading. F-18 is used as a contrast agent with low radiation. There is an on-site contrast agent production studio in the basement of the Japan Medical Examination Center.

Doctors make on-site imaging agents every day according to appointments to ensure the sensitivity of the agent and accurately detect early cancer cells.

While China has basic technology for manufacturing PET-specific developers, general hospitals or physical examination centers do not have pharmaceutical technology and cannot produce developers on site.

Pharmaceuticals need to be transported long distances from specialized pharmaceutical factories, and the sensitivity will be greatly reduced after more than 2 hours.

Highly professional

Most of China's hospitals are very powerful, so it's not that we don't have a shortage of advanced medical equipment in the country, but that we have too few professionals who can operate it.

If China and Japan have the same level of instruments, the level of doctors who can judge cancer through images will be higher in Japan.

The physical examination requires not only examination, but also reading, which requires the doctor's "interpretation ability".

Experienced doctors interpret the same picture differently from inexperienced doctors.

Sometimes a subtle lesion is accidentally missed. If it is not ‘interpreted’, the investigation will be in vain.

Japan’s system of academic specialists and supervising physicians ensures the average level of doctors’ medical skills.

Doctors and medical-related personnel are of high standard and highly professional. From basic research to clinical practice, professional societies have a long history.

The admission threshold for the medical department is high, which ensures the quality of doctors. Disease diagnosis and treatment generally follow the society's guidelines to ensure the quality of diagnosis and treatment.

It is also committed to cultivating peripheral majors (professional talents such as examination technicians, nurses, intermediary nurses, rehabilitation therapists, and medical affairs personnel), subdividing majors and implementing technical certification, and has a strict graduation examination system.

A qualified "medical-grade physical examination" must be completed simultaneously with sophisticated examination instruments and experienced medical examiners. It is precisely because of such efficient and precise physical examinations and the popularization of disease prevention and screening awareness that Japan has become a leader in global cancer prevention and treatment, and it is also worth pondering as a big country.