Findings seen in patients with newly diagnosed clinical stage I to II triple-negative or HER2-positive breast cancer
THURSDAY, Dec. 11, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for local staging and surgical planning does not improve local regional control among patients with early-stage triple-negative and human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2)-positive breast cancer, according to a study presented at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held from Dec. 9 to 12 in San Antonio.
Isabelle Bedrosian, M.D., from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and colleagues reported the primary outcome of five-year local regional recurrence (LRR) among patients with newly diagnosed clinical stage I to II estrogen receptor (ER)/progesterone receptor (PR)-negative and HER2-negative (triple-negative) or ER/PR-negative and HER2-positive breast cancer, deemed eligible for breast-conserving surgery (BCS). A total of 319 participants were randomly assigned to undergo staging breast MRI or no further local staging (161 and 158 patients, respectively).
Overall, 85 percent of the patients utilized systemic chemotherapy; 17.6 percent received treatment neoadjuvantly. A total of 93.4 percent of patients underwent surgical intervention: 91.9 underwent BCS as the initial surgical procedure, with no significant difference observed between the no-MRI and MRI groups (92.7 versus 91.9 percent). The researchers found that with median follow-up of 61.1 months, there were no differences in the rates of LRR among the 298 patients evaluable for the primary end point; five-year local regional control was 93.2 and 95.7 percent in the MRI and no-MRI groups, respectively. The five-year distant recurrence-free rate and overall survival were 94.3 and 92.2 percent, respectively, in the overall cohort, with no between-group differences noted.
“Our results further imply that there is no clinical utility to using preoperative MRI for the diagnostic workup of breast cancer patients to guide surgical treatment,” Bedrosian said in a statement. “We conclude that the routine use of MRI in this context is not warranted.”
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