CANCER: A New View of Breast Cancer
News about MR spectography
BY:MYRA DEMBROW
If you’re having an MRI screening for breast tumors, you might want to take an extra 10 minutes for a non-invasive MR spectroscopy, which, according to a recent Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center study published in Radiology, may cut the need for breast biopsies by more than half. Researchers found that when MR spectroscopy was conducted in addition to MRI screening for breast abnormalities, 23 of 40 masses would not have needed a biopsy—and all the cancers would have been caught.
“A brief MR spectroscopy procedure after an MRI scan…eliminates the need for biopsy to find out what the tumor is made of,” says lead researcher Lia Bartella, MB, ChB, an assistant professor of radiology at MSKCC. Dr. Bartella adds that it “will save unnecessary anxiety, cost and time for both the patient and the medical staff.”