Why High Breast Cancer Risk Women do not Prefer MRI Screening

Breast MRI screening may be beneficial to women at high lifetime risk of breast cancer in addition to routine mammography, but a new study finds that even though breast MRI is widely available, it is greatly underutilized. The study involved more than 422,000 women and the findings of the study are published in Journal of Women’s Health. Christoph Lee, MD, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, and a team of researchers coauthored the study entitled "Underutilization of Supplemental MRI Screening among Patients at High Breast Cancer Risk." They reported that while nearly 44% of women at high (>20%) lifetime breast cancer risk had mammography performed at a facility with on-site breast MRI screening available, only 6.6% of the high-risk women underwent breast MRI screening.

"Breast MRI screening may benefit women with a high lifetime risk of breast cancer through earlier cancer detection," says Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Women's Health, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women's Health, Richmond, VA, and President of the Academy of Women's Health. "A greater understanding is needed of why this widely available resource is not being fully utilized to screen high-risk women."

Source-Eurekalert