ABCNews -- Women with breast cancer are increasingly opting for mastectomies over lumpectomies, a surgical procedure that removes only the cancerous tumor inside the breast, say researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
The possibility that the growing use of magnetic resonance imaging for diagnosis is partly responsible for this increase is raising new concern over whether women are getting mastectomies needlessly. One leading breast cancer specialist called the MRI-driven boost in mastectomies "alarming."
Mayo Clinic researchers evaluated mastectomy rates at their institution between 1997 and 2006 in relation to the use of preoperative MRI -- a screening tool that is more sensitive than traditional mammography but also more likely to...