MRI scans may offer a new way to detect breast cancer at its earliest stages and perhaps even prevent cancer among high-risk women. Details of a German study show that magnetic resonance imaging was better than standard mammograms at detecting a nonmalignant tumor called ductal carcinoma in-situ, or DCIS. This could give surgeons time to remove the lesion before it can turn cancerous. The findings, published in the Lancet medical journal, suggest that MRI should be tested in more women to see if it should become a standard screening tool, said Dr. Carla Boetes and Dr. Ritse Mann of the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in the Netherlands. Boetes and Mann noted that autopsy results show that about 9 percent of women have undetected DCIS, and that almost all malignant breast cancer is believed to start out as DCIS.
TOO SOON TO RECOMMEND
But Debbie Saslow, director of breast and gynecologic cancer at the American Cancer Society, said it is far too soon to use MRI routinely for breast cancer screening.
"Although these results were unexpected, the pathophysiology of breast cancer
provides ample justification for the findings," they wrote in a commentary
in
Lancet.
"MRI should thus no longer be regarded as an adjunct
to mammography but as a distinct method to detect breast cancer at its earliest
stage," they wrote.
"MRI could help improve the ability to diagnose
DCIS, especially DCIS with high nuclear grade," Kuhl's team wrote.
TOO SOON TO RECOMMEND
But Debbie Saslow, director of breast and gynecologic cancer at the American Cancer Society, said it is far too soon to use MRI routinely for breast cancer screening.
"The American Cancer Society recommends that MRI screening be done annually in addition to mammography starting at age 30 for women at high risk," Saslow said in telephone interview.Breast cancer is diagnosed in 1.2 million men and women globally every year and kills 500,000.
"For the most part, these are women who have had either a genetic test or found a mutation (that puts them at high risk of developing breast cancer), there is a mutation in the family, or there is a strong enough family history that would lead you to think that the risk of having a mutation is pretty high," she added.
"Sometimes doctors will think they see something. With MRI it is not clear-cut," Saslow said. "Some of those women are choosing to have mastectectomies."
"Mammography still finds things that an MRI doesn't," Saslow said.
