It’s become pretty common for women with early-stage breast cancer to get an MRI before they have surgery to remove the tumor. But it’s unclear whether having an MRI actually reduces the risk that the cancer will come back, and it may wind up leading women to have more aggressive surgery than they need, a new analysis found. In particular, MRIs may result in surgery that removes most or all of the breast, when removing less would have been just as safe, according to Daniel Hayes , one of the authors of the paper. “I’ve spent most of my life as a medical oncologist helping women keep their breast, and I’d hate to see us going the other way in the absence of evidence,” Hayes, a University of Michigan breast cancer specialist, told the Health Blog. The article, published online today by the journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians , reviewed the existing studies looking at the use of MRIs in this setting. Studies have shown that MRIs do find some tumors that would go otherwise undetected

— but those studies have not demonstrated that finding tumors reduces the risk that cancer will return or prove deadly. It may be, Hayes said, that the additional tumors are destroyed by the combination of surgery and radiation that make up the standard treatment for many women with this type of cancer. Hayes said the University of Michigan does not typically give MRIs to these patients, and he argued that the tests shouldn’t be commonly used in this situation until and unless there is clear evidence to show that they reduce the risk of cancer recurrence or improve survival. “I love new stuff, but the scientific method says new technology is not science, it’s toys,” he said. “The science is to determine whether that toy improves an important outcome.” Bonus Study : Read our post from last year on the recent rise in the percentage of Mayo Clinic breast cancer patients who undergo surgery to remove the entire breast. Image via AP

Read the original here: 
Rethinking MRIs for Some Breast Cancer Patients