New recommendations from the American Cancer Society advising expanded use of MRI in women at high-risk for developing breast cancer were released on Wednesday. Another study appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine said MRIs were useful in women who already have breast cancer.

The American Cancer Society guidelines recommend MRI scans for women who have:
* A BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation
* A family history of breast cancer
* Relatives having the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation
* Had Chest radiation
* Certain syndromes like Li-Fraumeni syndrome, Cowden syndrome or Bannayan-Riley-Ruvalcaba syndrome.

The guidelines are due for publication in the ACS journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. They recommend MRI scans for women with high breast cancer risk aged 30 or above annually. Additionally MRIs must be performed at experienced medical centers that can perform follow-up biopsies if necessary, the guidelines added.

Breast M.R.I is an expensive procedure costing anywhere between $1,000 to $2,000. More often than not these scans are not covered by insurance or Medicare thus greatly increasing the expenses involved. However these guidelines and the study say MRI is beneficial.

The study recommends MRI scan in patients who already have breast cancer. It found a hidden tumor in the other breast in newly diagnosed breast cancers before it could be detected by other methods like mammograms.

Around 969 women with recent breast cancer diagnosis were involved in this study. Lead researcher Constance Lehman, of the University of Washington Medical Center, and colleagues said MRI was able to detect cancers in the second breast in 3 percent of cases missed by mammograms. The MRI scans were done 25 medical centers in the U.S.

However there were 91 false positive scans, meaning the MRI was so sensitive it detected abnormalities other than cancer. Dr Lehman, who is also a member of the ACS panel, said women were quite happy to undergo the MRI even if they got a false-positive report.

"This study supports the recommendation that women who are diagnosed with breast cancer consider the benefits of a breast MRI," Lehman said. Previous studies and documented data say 10 percent of women with cancer in one breast will eventually develop it in the other one as well.

Sometimes dense breast tissue prevents mammograms from detecting tumors, which can be unmasked by MRI. The overwhelming evidence in favor of a MRI in the second breast will mean insurers cannot refuse to cover it, said Etta Pisano, co-author of the study and a professor of radiology at the University of North Carolina.

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in women, particularly in the developed countries. Over a million women are diagnosed worldwide every year, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France.

The American Cancer Society says that 200,000 women are diagnosed with the condition each year and 40,000 succumb to it. The National Cancer Institute estimates that at least 13.2 percent of the women born today will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lives.

Early diagnosis is very important to survival and successful treatment of the cancer. MRI is one of the most sensitive scans and can detect cancer at its earliest stage, thus giving patients a better chance of survival.