Jan 10
4
At Risk Breast Cancer Patients Refusing MRIs?
Many women apparently are refusing to have MRIs done that could greatly benefit from one of the magnetic resonance imaging tests due to their status as high risk breast cancer potential patients. MRI’s have a much better chance at detecting breast cancer when it’s in the very earliest stages in these at risk women because it thoroughly scans the body for any irregularities. However, in studies where patients were identified as high risk breast cancer patients, about 42% of these women actually refused the MRI for various reasons, even when it was offered free of charge.
This really surprised the doctors that offered the tests for free in the study, because, like me, they thought these patients would want to participate in almost a 100% rate since the test was free and their health could potentially be at risk with something that may not be identified otherwise. The patients had many reasons, one of them being financial, but not directly related to the cost of the MRI, rather to any costs they were afraid of incurring because of anything that might be found, or the ever popular false positive readings.
There have been known to be false positive readings from breast cancer screenings that result in unnecessary further medical costs like biopsies and other things that may add up to hundreds or thousands of dollars in costs. Some women in the study cited claustrophobia and not being able to be in the cylindrical, restrictive environment that you are required to be in for a long period of time for the MRI reading. Even when offered sedation, many women still did not want to subject themselves to that.
Some women cited time restraints, which I can understand as the process can be lengthy, however even that seems like a somewhat weak excuse for something that could save your life in the end, although I suspect that these women were giving reasons that really only were part of the real reason why they didn’t want one, and in fact they may have had several reasons for not wanting the MRI. At any rate, MRI’s are coming up as one of the better, more thorough ways of screening for breast cancer, however they have to figure out a better way to do them, and at a lower cost, before patients really start wanting to have one done.
