New recommendations call for MRI in breast cancer

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Women with cancer in one breast should get an MRI scan of the other breast to make sure the cancer is not there, too, the American Cancer Society recommended on Wednesday.

Healthy women at high risk of getting breast cancer also should get magnetic resonance imaging scans, the cancer society said.

The recommendations follow a study that shows MRI scans can detect cancer in the opposite breast 90 percent of the time. MRI found breast tumors missed by mammograms, a specialized type of X-ray.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved 1,000 women with cancer in one breast. The MRI scans found 30 out of 33 tumors in the other breast among the women.

"One in ten women diagnosed with cancer in one breast will develop the disease in the opposite breast. Having a better technique to find these cancers as early as possible will increase the chances of successful treatment," said NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni.

The National Cancer Institute, one of the National Institutes of Health, paid for the study.

"This study gives us a clearer indication that if an MRI of the opposite breast is negative, women diagnosed with cancer in only one breast can more confidently opt against having a double, or bilateral, mastectomy," added National Cancer Institute Director Dr. John Niederhuber.

Constantine Gatsonis and colleagues at Brown University in Rhode Island said the study was not designed to find out if MRIs or mammograms are better at finding breast cancer among women who have only an average risk.