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You do NOT want an unnecessary scan. There is a common misconception that knowledge in this arena is good. While the scan itself is not dangerous, what you would be required to do with the information is. Almost everyone has some abnormalities, we call them "incidentalomas". Knowing about them will cause unneeded biopsies and months to years of worry that "you have cancer" or " something is not right". There is a reason that there are strict screening recommendations in medicine. Unless a disease has a long preclinical (pre-symptom) phase with a clear improvement in outcomes from early treatment ( no lead time bias) then screening ( testing without symptoms to make sure nothing is there) is openly harmful and should not be done.
might cause you stress, or might lead you to finding something before it ends up threatening your life? There's a whole lot of stress-inducing shit going around right now. Saying stress is potentially dangerous is true, but shouldn't be used as an excuse not to get imaging done.
Haha yes I work in healthcare and we used the world "incidentaloma" when I was in school lolol.
Sometimes things diagnosed incidentally do save people's lives though. I had an uncle diagnosed with renal cancer indicidentally when they were imaging him for some other reason. He had the kidney removed and has been cancer free forever now...might have been more than a decade ago. In many cases, a random scan can save someone's life.
But the other hand causes things you describe, unnecessary stress and intervention for otherwise benign but odd things that people see. It's one of the big reasons why you don't generally just get an MRI just to get one.
I've been fighting back and forth with what to do in my mind here.