Alternating Breast Scans
Reported December 30, 2008
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — The best breast cancer detection could be alternating scans.
New findings from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center show magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) alternated with mammography at six-month intervals can detect breast cancer not found by mammography alone.
Studies have shown MRI is more sensitive than mammography, with a 71 percent to 100 percent accuracy, compared to 16 percent to 40 percent for mammography. For high-risk women, many doctors now include MRI with mammography in a clinical breast exam once a year.
“What we started to do at M. D. Anderson was to see if we could do mammography and then six months later do a breast MRI exam, followed six months later with a mammogram exam, and then six months after that with a breast MRI. That way the women would receive an imaging modality screening every six months,” Huong Le-Petross, M.D., an assistant professor of diagnostic radiology at M.D. Anderson, was quoted as saying.
Researchers say this alternating method detected nine cancers among a group of study participants. Of these nine cancers, 55 percent were detected by MRI but not by mammography, 33 percent were found by both MRI and mammography, and 11 percent was overlooked by both screening techniques. No cancer was found with mammography alone.
“Mammography has always been the standard, and now we are challenging that gold standard examination,” Dr. Le-Petross said.
SOURCE: Presented at the Cancer Therapy and Research Center-American Association for Cancer Research’s Breast Cancer Symposium in San Antonio, Texas, Dec. 14, 2008
