Understanding MRI and ultrasound report

Anonymous

Understanding MRI and ultrasound report

Tbenn86

Hello everyone. I am new to this group so first a little about me. I am 31 years old and considered high risk for BC based on strong family history (paternal aunt diagnosed at 37 years old and passed away at 42, sister diagnosed with stage 2b at 44 years old, and mother DCIS 58 years old) combined with a variant of TP53 genetic mutation. My breast surgeon suggested I have a MRI and ultrasound as a screening tool. To my surprise they did find an abnormality and are performing a biopsy this week on 2 areas. I am so confused over the wording on the report and the surgeon didn't offer too much information yet. I am hoping you ladies could help explain the results and offer any suggestions, experience or advice. I am so incredibly anxious for the biopsy and ultimate results. Sunmary of the findings are below.Thank you so much for any insight.

MRI: left breast; Inspissated proteinaceous material is seen anteriorly within the. Ready. There is a 6 mm focus of enhancement centrally within the breast. There is also non mass enhancement measuring 1 cm in the 1:00 axis , posteriorly

Ultrasound: left breast; 5:00 position retroareolar region: 6mm hypoechoic nodule inseparable from a duct.

leaf

They are just describing literally what they see in the MRI and ultrasound. For example, if it was a photo of a woman, they would be saying they see two brown eyes, brown curly hair, a mole 2 inches to the right of the tip of the nose, eyebrows of X length, etc. They CANNOT tell for sure what it is. Almost all people with breast cancer are diagnosed by having a pathologist look at a piece of tissue under the microscope.

Normally, they rate imaging (mammograms, ultrasounds and MRIs) with a BIRADS score, which gives you some idea how risky the imaging is. https://radiopaedia.org/articles/breast-imaging-re... You'd normally find this somewhere on the radiology report. They aren't REQUIRED to give you a BIRADS score, but they often do.

Normally all women with a BIRADS score of 4 or 5 are biopsied, so they can look at a piece of tissue under the microscope.

You may want to delete one of your two posts, so you don't have 2 different threads going on on the same subject.

Tbenn86

hi Leaf. Thank you so much for your reply. Yes at the bottom of the MRI it is a BIRADS 4. I am hoping someone has had similarities on a sono or MRI and can offer some insight to what it turned out to be after biopsy. Thanks

(And yes I just deleted the other post. I wasn't quite sure how this whole board works just yet. Thanks for the tip!

mustlovepoodles

tbenn, I can understand your concern, based on your family history. BIRADs4 means that they believe there is reason to biopsy. But perhaps you can feel some reassurance knowing that most of biopsies are benign (80%). By way of comparison, BIRADs5 confers 95% probability of cancer! 

Best of luck to you. Have you scheduled your biopsy yet?

Tbenn86

mustlovepoodles, yes the US guided is tomorrow and the MRI guided for the 1cm non mass enhancement is Friday. So nervous because this has all happened in less than a week so there's been very little time to really understand all of this and process. Thank you for those statistics it does help.