Breast MRI Best at Tracking Response to Chemo: Study

HealthDay – 31 mins ago WEDNESDAY, May 23 (HealthDay News) -- Getting chemotherapy before breast cancer surgery can mean the difference between a mastectomy or a breast-conserving lumpectomy, experts say.

And new research shows that getting an MRI during the first round of chemo can help predict quickly if the cancer will respond to the treatment.

MRI works better than clinical examination of the tumor, the standard way to assess how well the chemotherapy is working, said researcher Dr. Nola Hylton, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging at the University of California, San Francisco.

Although many doctors order an MRI after all rounds of chemotherapy are finished, Hylton's team did MRIs before, during and after a chemo cycle, and also when all of the chemotherapy was finished.

"What we are trying to do is fine-tune MRI so it can be a more sensitive measure of whether people are responding

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