Ah, a perfect question for comparative effectiveness research.
Surgeon Jeffrey Parks takes a look at a study looking at breast MRIs during the pre-operative workup of patients with breast cancer.
Essentially, surgical outcomes were not improved, and worse, “leads to a higher rate of unnecessary mastectomy, and is extremely expensive (about $1600 a pop, out of pocket).”
Although there are specific cases where a breast MRI may be indicated, it is questionable whether it adds more useful information over a mammogram alone in most cases.
I agree with Dr. Parks (emphasis mine), in that “there is not nearly enough evidence to support its routine use in most patients with breast cancer.”
Related posts:
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- "The great majority of women in the United States should not be getting MRI scans for breast cancer screening"
- Breast cancer screening: Orac’s take
- Abortion and breast cancer
- Breast cancer and hormones
- A 10-year old girl with breast cancer, how much media coverage should she receive?
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Hi Kevin
Interesting article. I tend to agree – it has it’s uses, but only in carefully selected women at high risk of having a breast lesion. Buckeye surgeon recently did a good post on this, http://tr.im/hFs3
It’s also interesting to note that these high risk patients generally have a genetic susceptibility, and by regularly zapping them with mammos we are exposing them to even more neoplasm forming radiation – although I’d agree it’s a risk/benefit situation in this case.
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