In recent years, cancer has become the “number one killer” that threatens the population. Compared with the high incidence of cancer, the power of routine medical checkups to detect early cancer is particularly weak. Even the tour groups that travel abroad for cancer checkups. So is it necessary to do cancer checkups? What should be done? Health check-ups are not equal to “anti-cancer check-ups” Many patients in hospitals wonder why cancer is not detected early even though they have participated in the physical check-ups organized by their units every year and the results are good. In fact, the focus of routine health checkups is mainly on physical examination, cardiovascular diseases, chronic liver diseases and diabetes, but not on cancer screening and early detection. In addition, the items and equipment of health checkups are difficult to detect early tumors, and it can be said that most of the general physical checkups are not applicable to early detection of tumors. The items of our routine physical examination usually include liver function, blood routine, urine routine, biochemistry, chest X-ray and so on. The advantage of these broad and comprehensive medical checkups is that they are low cost and suitable for a wide range of people, but there are also disadvantages: the medical checkups are not designed for each person’s actual situation, for example, for people with tumor risk, there are no targeted medical checkups; in addition, the equipment of routine medical checkups is also “imprecise” and therefore, it is easy to miss many opportunities to detect cancer. Many opportunities for cancer detection are missed. For example, colorectal cancer almost always evolves from colon adenoma, and this process usually takes 5-10 years, during this period, there is no way to detect the abnormality. Why can’t lung cancer be detected by X-ray chest examination? It has to do with the equipment. CT is a spiral scan of the lungs to get a lot of information and can detect lung cancer nodules with smaller lesions. On the other hand, chest X-ray is taken from front to back and there will be many overlapping structures, so it is almost difficult to detect small lesions on chest X-ray. Therefore, chest X-ray is not suitable for early detection of lung cancer, unless the tumor grows large enough to be detected on chest X-ray, but the best time for early intervention is often lost. Of course, there are also those who go off the beaten path and think that since regular physical examination cannot effectively detect traces of cancer, I will have a whole body examination and check what is good and what is complete. As a result, many private medical checkup centers have launched a series of high-grade checkup packages, some of which have more than 100 items, and all kinds of high-end instruments, such as CT, MRI, bone scan, etc. Some people even spend tens of thousands of yuan for a whole-body PET-CT checkup. This idea has obviously gone astray, and transitional examinations cannot achieve satisfactory results, especially since some of the examinations themselves are radioactive. ”The so-called “cancer check-ups” are actually some medical check-ups designed for early detection of tumors, which are different from the traditional regular medical check-ups. Unlike general medical checkups, cancer checkups are more targeted in terms of equipment and items, such as the use of more direct and accurate examination equipment to detect lesions: for example, indirect nasopharyngoscope is used for ear, nose and throat examination in health checkups, while electronic nasopharyngeal endoscope is used in cancer checkups; X-ray chest X-ray is usually done in regular medical checkups, while low-dose CT is used in cancer checkups, which is more conducive to the detection of small lesions at an early stage; stool routine is usually checked in regular medical checkups, while targeted CT is used in cancer checkups. Routine physical examinations usually check stool routine, while the targeted cancer prevention physical examination is colonoscopy. Some items are even lacking in routine physical examination, such as gastroscopy for stomach cancer and breast ultrasound for breast cancer. Of course, there are also some tumors that lack effective means for early detection, such as neurological tumors, pancreatic cancer, leukemia, etc. In addition to the selection of medical checkup items, the analysis of the examination reports by oncologists is also more conducive to detecting the traces of tumors or guiding future precautions. For example, in the initial screening process of nasopharyngeal cancer, VcA-IgA and EA-IgA should be checked, and if they are positive, further quantitative analysis, electronic nasopharyngoscopy, and biopsy should be done to identify whether they are caused by inflammation, benign tumor, or malignant tumor. Therefore, a reasonable cancer prevention physical examination should be “customized” according to individual tumor risk: targeted physical examination according to individual’s lifestyle, family history, past medical history and risk of certain tumors. This article does not list out how to choose the right cancer checkup for you, but further selection should be based on age, gender, individual and other factors, and the main point here is to tell you to be aware of this. Although not all tumors can be detected at an early stage, it is even more impossible to detect them at an earlier stage without targeted checkups. Targeted cancer checkups may seem to be a worry, but in fact they play a positive role in early detection of tumors, because the cure rate of malignant tumors in early stage is much higher than that of late stage cancer; if there is no awareness of early detection, the cost of examination after having symptoms is often greater, which invariably increases the burden of society, so this is why everyone is emphasizing the importance of early detection and early treatment of diseases.