For patients with a new diagnosis of breast cancer, breast MRI finds unsuspected malignant lesions in both the ipsilateral and contralateral breasts, according to a new study published in the May 2009 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (Vol. 192, pp. 1438-1444).
Dr. Amy Schell and colleagues at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH, evaluated the effect of preoperative breast MRI on the diagnosis of unsuspected additional malignant tumors and on surgical treatment choices, enrolling 199 patients with a new diagnosis of breast cancer who underwent preoperative bilateral breast MRI.
MRI detected additional suspicious previously unsuspected lesions in 74 patients (37%). Fifty-four of these lesions, in 38 patients (19%), were identified as malignant, of which 41 (76%) were invasive. Retrospective review of the MRI-identified ipsilateral malignant lesions resulted in hypothetical recommendations that would have altered the surgical treatment of 26 of the patients (13%), principally as mastectomy or wider excision, according to the researchers.
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