Breast MRI is getting lots of attention in the news and in research. It's exciting to see and read about it, but the information out there is a little misleading.

Although breast MRI has been proven to find more breast cancers than have traditional mammography and ultrasound, it still has its pitfalls and will not replace traditional mammography for annual screening. Here’s important information you should know about breast MRI.

MRI is highly sensitive but not very specific. This means that it finds anything and everything that’s present in the breast. The problem is that the majority of the time these findings are going to be nothing more than artifact. Yet a woman can age 10 years trying to get these findings deciphered. It would be a shame to end up traveling the biopsy road for something later found to not even warrant a mention on a standard mammogram report.

Breast MRI has been proven of value for those women who have dense breast tissue or who are at high risk for developing breast cancer. For these women, getting a breast MRI in addition to a mammogram is helpful and makes sense. But even in these cases, she may be told something is there that after extensive investigation ends up being nothing.

If you think you want an MRI instead of a mammogram, think again. Your doctor is not turning down your request solely because of its cost or because it’s probably not covered by insurance. The physician is doing it because he or she believes there is no valid medical necessity for it and that it may raise more questions than useful answers.