Breast CancerThis news may prove to be extremely beneficial to the fairer sex. A study claims that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) combined with mammography could diagnose nearly all cancers at an initial stage, thus decreasing the frequency of advanced stage breast cancer in high-risk women.

The experts included around 1,275 women at high risk for breast cancer in the study. They divided these women in two groups. One group was apparently monitored with MRI as well as mammography. The second group which was the control set was supposedly given traditional screening by mammography. It was seen that the subjects appeared to have the malfunctioning BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation, which is said to propose an extremely elevated lifetime danger of developing breast cancer.

Lead researcher Ellen Warner, M.D., M.Sc., medical oncologist in the Department of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, in Toronto, Canada, commented, “Earlier stage breast cancers are more likely to be curable. We can be fairly confident that if screening with MRI finds cancers at a much earlier stage, it probably also saves lives.”

Warner and colleagues apparently trailed the women for numerous years to verify which screening technique could diagnose cancer at a considerably preliminary stage.

It was noted that around 41 cases of breast cancer were detected in the MRI group as against the 76 diagnoses in the control group. It was also observed that there appeared to be proportionately less advanced breast cancers, and more initial cancers among women who were screened with MRI as opposed to those who were not screened with MRI.

Additionally, it was observed that in the MRI group, the cancer size was apparently smaller. The standard size of invasive cancers in the MRI group was claimed to be 0.9 cm as opposed to the 1.8 cm in the control group. The experts also noted that around 3 percent of cancers in the MRI group were bigger than 2 cm in diameter as against the 29 percent of those in the control group.

Warner concluded by mentioning that these results will hopefully convince high-risk women and their health care providers that breast screening with yearly MRI and mammography is a reasonable alternative to surgical removal of their breasts, which is commonly done to prevent breast cancer.

The study was presented at the CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.