MRI helps detect breast cancer

Women with cancer in one breast should get an MRI scan of the other breast to check if the cancer has affected it as well. Researchers from the Brown University in Rhode Island found that one in ten women diagnosed with cancer in one breast will also develop the disease in the opposite breast. Having a better technique to find these cancers as early as possible will increase the chances of successful treatment. The study involved 1,000 women with cancer in one breast and underwent a mammogram and MRI scan. The MRI scans found 30 out of 33 tumours in the other breast among the women. This study gives a clearer indication that if an MRI of the opposite breast is negative, women diagnosed with cancer in only one breast can more confidently opt against having a double, or bilateral, mastectomy. Researchers said that the study was designed only to see if MRI improved detection of cancers in the other breasts of women already diagnosed with unilateral breast cancer. The American Cancer Society recommends that women with a genetic mutation that puts them at high risk of breast cancer, called a BRCA mutation, as well as their close relatives, should also have an MRI scan in addition to annual mammograms. Women who got radiation treatment to the chest between the ages of 10 and 30, such as for Hodgkin's disease, a lymph cancer, should have MRIs of their breast done. Such treatment in the 1970s and 1980s has been shown to raise the risk of breast cancer in later life. Healthy woman who are at a high risk of getting breast cancer should also undergo MRI scans. Researchers also found that MRI is not perfect, and in fact leads to many more false positive results than mammography. These false positives can lead to a high number of avoidable biopsies, creating fear, anxiety, and adverse health effects. Therefore, careful patient selection for screening is very important. In patients with breast cancer, MRI scans of the opposite breast are advisable since they are able to detect cancer in the opposite breast in 90 percent of the cases.