An interval cancer is one that is diagnosed outside of the regularly-scheduled screening exams. Example: A woman feels a lump, goes to see her doctor immediat

An interval cancer is one that is diagnosed outside of the regularly-scheduled screening exams. Example: A woman feels a lump, goes to see her doctor immediately rather than wait until her next scheduled screening, and this results in a cancer diagnosis. One of the main reasons this happens is because the previous regular screening exam failed to detect the cancer. Mammography misses cancers more often in dense breasts than in typical breasts. MRI has long been known to be much more sensitive than mammography at finding cancer in dense breasts. This study looked at whether adding an MRI to a screening mammogram for extremely dense breasts would result in fewer interval cancers. It did, which is not surprising, but this was a relatively small study that resulted in only 4 cancers diagnosed in women who actually underwent the supplemental MRI. Link to the paper: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1903986 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1903986