High-tech MRIs - Helpful or Unnecessary?
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Last week, Time magazine reported that women who are diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer and who rely on results from high-tech MRIs, usually choose more aggressive and sometimes unnecessary treatment plans.
But that may not be such a good idea, say researchers in a commentary appearing in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, a publication of the American Cancer Society. The authors looked at studies pitting preoperative use of MRI, which relies on magnetic waves, against mammograms and similar tests that use radiation to take pictures of breast tissue. Researchers found that women choosing MRIs often ended up with more aggressive surgery — much of which wasn't necessary — than women who did not use the scans. What's more, employing the newer and more sensitive MRI technology did not improve a woman's chance of surviving cancer or her chances of avoiding a recurrence of tumors.
Women who had the MRIs usually chose more aggressive surgery because the MRI scans pick up more cancer lesions than mammograms.
However, doctors question whether these lesions are more bark than bite. In women with early-stage breast cancer, the chance of recurrence ranges from about 5% to 10% in the ten years following the first diagnosis. Multiple studies over the past 30 years have shown that a lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy provides women with the same survival and recurrence rates as a mastectomy. After a lumpectomy, a patient may still have cancer in the breast but radiation usually destroys the remaining disease.
MRIs, or magnetic resonance imaging scans, are sensitive enough to detect small tumors and other abnormalities that mammograms might miss. This leads to increased anxiety in patients and causes them to pursue more aggressive treatments than might be necessary. Dr. Larry Norton of Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City explained that while a lumpectomy may leave small cancers around the surgery site, the radiation that follows will most likely destroy it. If you don't have the radiation treatment, Dr. Norton explains, then you are much more likely to get a recurrence in the same location.
For more information on breast MRIs, click here.
For general information on MRIs, click here.