This archive report was first published on 28 November 2019.
Published on November 28, 2019, a Dutch study has found that M.R.I. screening can be more effective in detecting breast cancer in women with dense breasts, but also raises concerns about false positives and overdiagnosis.
Dr. Dan L. Longo, a deputy editor of the New England Journal and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, cautioned that the ultimate test of the value of M.R.I. screening will be whether it improves survival, a question that will not be answered for a very long time.
Carla van Gils, senior author of the study and a professor of clinical epidemiology at University Medical Center Utrecht, noted that while M.R.I.s can detect very early stage tumors that might never become life-threatening, they also yield many false positive results that lead to unnecessary biopsies.
However, Dr. van Gils said that the significant reduction in interval cancers – cancers that are diagnosed after a negative mammogram – suggests that supplementary M.R.I.s may be a lifesaving tool for women with dense breasts.
Only about 10 percent of women have extremely dense tissue like the women in the Dutch study. Having dense breast tissue generally makes it harder to see tumors on a mammogram because both the dense tissue and the tumors show up white on an X-ray.
