Preoperative Breast MRI detects additional cancers

A paper by Bae et al published in Radiology indicates that preoperative MRI in women whose breast cancer was detected by ultrasound found additional cancers.

The study was a retrospective review of 374 women, median age, 48 years, with breast cancer detected at screening ultrasound.

Of 374 women, 21 or 5.6% patients were diagnosed with additional cancer.  In premenopausal women with invasive breast cancer and in those with index invasive lobular histologic type had higher incidence of additional cancer detected at MR imaging.  Premenopausal status also put the women at risk.

The authors concluded that preoperative MRI detected additional sites of cancer in women with breast cancer detected at screening ultrasound.