@dac58 You would have to check with your care center/provider. At the large facility I belong to, standard care for breast cancer staging is bone scan and body scan. MRI is not standard care. I was fortunate when I spoke with my surgeon about my concerns for being sure the unaffected breast didn't have anything growing, that she ordered it for me and that's when we found the secondary tumor in the affected breast, i.e. one was outer inner and the second was just on the opposite side of that tumor. Again, my other breast was clear. My breasts have always been quite dense and, what surprised me was when I thought I felt another node and had to have a mammogram following radiation, was (even though I had partial mastectomy), the breast tissue is still dense and difficult to visualize and had to have additional magnification views to see the new microcalcification clusters.

For me, yes it is. When I was diagnosed with one tumor in one breast the radiologist immediately ordered a breast MRI on both to ensure there were no other issues. There was one suspicious area on the other side, so they did an MRI biopsy, which turned out to be benign. Now the standard of care for me going forward (lumpectomy and radiation completed last year) will be mammograms and breast MRI’s alternating every 6 months.

They ordered mine before I had surgery. That's how they picked up the 2nd tumor.