Role of Breast Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Early Stage Breast Cancer

Abstract

Background: globally, breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer death in women. The surgical management of patients with early stage operable breast cancer is the main step of treatment and addresses both the primary tumor and regional lymphatics. Objectives: this study aims at highlighting the role of preoperative dynamic contrast enhanced breast MRI in early stage breast cancer and its impact on surgical management. Patients and Methods: this study was carried out over the period from March 2015 to October 2017 in Radiodiagnosis Department of Mansoura University Hospitals and Nasser Institute. The study was conducted on 29 female their ages ranging from 30 to 59 years old the study was approved by our Institution’s Ethics Committee, and all patients gave their informed consent before inclusion in the study. Results: in our study, MRI was requested for different causes varying between dense breast which may obscure lesions (51.7%), multifocal lobular carcinoma (13.7%), exclude multicentric lesion (10. 3%) and in (24%) of patients MRI was requested as preoperative routine check. In our study, we found that in 10 patients (34.5%), MRI revealed additional lesions that were not seen on conventional imaging by mammography and ultrasound.Six lesions (20.7%) of those additional occult lesions were identified as malignant and all were ipsilateral. Our study reported that six patients (20. 7%) who had unsuspected abnormalities identified on MRI had changes in treatment based on MRI findings. Conclusion: the results of this study confirm previous reports that preoperative MRI of the breast alters clinical management and detects otherwise occult carcinoma in a substantial number of patients with early breast cancer.