Applications

1333 – Breast Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Find out about the service or technology in this application and the medical condition it addresses. You can also view the application documents, the deadlines for providing consultation input and the outcome of the application when the MSAC process is complete.

  • Status Pre-assessment
  • Type New application
  • Pre-PASC consultation -
  • Pre-MSAC consultation -
  • Outcome Partially supported

Application details

Reason for application

New MBS item.

Service or technology in this application

The use of MRI for women newly diagnosed with breast cancer to offer local staging when conventional imaging with mammography and ultrasound is likely to understage the disease, being:

  • women undergoing preoperative (neoadjuvant) chemotherapy;
  • women with the lobular subtype of breast cancer where conventional imaging frequently underestimates the extent of disease;
  • women with a significant discrepancy between clinical examination findings and conventional imaging findings where the confirmation of more extensive disease on MRI would alter management (e.g. women with very dense breasts); and
  • women presenting with metastatic breast cancer in the lymph nodes or elsewhere in the body where conventional imaging and examination fails to show the source of the tumour.

Type: Investigative

Medical condition this application addresses

Breast cancer.

Meetings to consider this application

  • PASC meeting: 
    • 12 - 13 December 2013
    • 16 - 17 April 2014
  • ESC meeting: 12 - 13 February 2015
  • MSAC meeting: 1 - 2 April 2015