MRIs may become a useful tool for detecting breast cancer, but for now their use requires careful consideration.

06-01-09 RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Mammograms are routinely used to catch breast cancer, but more and more studies are finding that Magnetic Resonance Imaging, commonly known as MRI, can detect tumors missed by mammography and ultrasound in certain groups of women. The latest research, published this month in the American Journal of Roentgenology, found that MRI caught additional breast tumors previously undetected in 20 percent of women newly diagnosed with breast cancer.

THE DETAILS: After 199 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, doctors at a more rural, midsize regional hospital performed MRI scans on them, and found 58 additional malignant lesions in 38 patients.

WHAT IT MEANS: The idea that MRI can catch tumors that mammography or ultrasound doesn’t isn’t new, but using it in the field of breast cancer is a work in progress, says study coauthor Petra Lewis, MD, associate Professor of radiology, obstetrics and gynecology at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. Her study backs up previous findings, and shows that the technology appears to work even in more regional hospitals, not just in internationally recognized breast units. A 2007 study published in The Lancet found that MRI was 92 percent accurate in detecting a certain type of breast cancer when compared to mammogram, which was 56 percent accurate. The problem is, there’s no research to answer this very important question: Is it actually improving the patient’s overall outcome? “Its role is still a little undefined,” explains Dr. Lewis. “It does, in the studies that have been done, pick up more breast cancers than mammography and ultrasound in the high-risk groups. But we don’t know if it affects survival in those patients.”