What are the potential harms or risks of MRI screening?
As with mammography and other screening tests, false negative and false positive results do occur. False negatives can lead to missed cancers, with potentially worse prognosis; false positives may lead to increased anxiety and potential harms associated with unnecessary interventions for benign lesions. The specificity of MRI is significantly lower than that of mammography in all studies to date, resulting in more recalls and biopsies. Most call-backs, however, can be resolved without biopsy. The call-back and biopsy rates of MRI are higher than for mammography in high-risk populations; while the increased sensitivity of MRI leads to a higher call-back rate it also leads to a higher number of cancers detected.
