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MRI changes Breast
Cancer Treatment Choice; Increases time to
treatment
Newswise — More than a
quarter of breast cancer patients who had an
MRI examination before their initial
surgical treatment had their treatment
change, according to a study out of Yale
University School of Medicine.
The study included 110
who had an MRI examination before treatment
and 374 who did not undergo an MRI
examination. “MRI prompted biopsy of 70
sites in 44 patients, said Carol Lee, MD, an
author of the study, now at Memorial Sloan
Kettering Cancer Center in NY. Sixteen
additional sites of cancer were found in 13
(12%) women, she said.
Surgical treatment was
changed in 31 (28%) cases, she added.
Fifteen patients had mastectomy rather than
lumpectomy. Six had more extensive
lumpectomy and three had treatment for
cancer that was detected in the opposite
breast.
“Seven others made a
decision to have bilateral mastectomy after
a suspicious finding was seen on MRI but
before additional cancer was confirmed by a
biopsy; it turned out that none had cancer
in the contralateral breast” Dr. Lee noted.
“While we can’t show
definitively that these women made the
choice to have a mastectomy due to concerns
generated by findings on the MR images, this
remains a possibility, and patients and
their doctors need to take this into
consideration before deciding to have an MRI
examination before treatment,” Dr. Lee said.
Adding an MRI
examination also delayed treatment.
“The mean interval
between diagnosis and definitive surgery in
the group that had the MRI examination was
41 days compared to 27 days for the patients
who did not undergo an MRI examination,” she
said.
“Breast MRI is a very
useful tool for assessing extent of tumor in
the breast, however, there are downsides
that need to be taken into consideration,”
Dr. Lee emphasized.
The full results of
this study will be presented on Tuesday,
April 15, 2008 during the American Roentgen
Ray Society’s annual meeting in Washington,
DC.
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