The American Cancer Society's 2007 guidelines recommended breast cancer screening with annual MRI as an adjunct to mammography for women at high risk of the disease, said presenter Christine No and colleagues. But do women and referring physicians assume that a negative MRI means no annual mammogram is necessary?
No's study included 50 out of 1,750 patients who had undergone screening breast MRI since 2003 and who met the lifetime risk criteria for annual MRI. The team retrospectively analyzed each patient's electronic medical record.
For patients who had breast MRI, 20.3% did not get a mammogram within a year of the previous exam, the group found. Adding annual screening MRI examinations to routine screening mammograms can adversely affect patient adherence to annual mammography schedules, No and colleagues concluded.
