Costs of diagnostic and preoperative workup with and without breast MRI in older women with a breast cancer diagnosis

Background Breast cancer in the U.S. - estimated at 232,670 incident cases in 2014 - has the highest aggregate economic burden of care relative to other female cancers. Yet, the amount of cost attributed to diagnostic/preoperative work up has not been characterized. We examined the costs of imaging and biopsy among women enrolled in Medicare who did and did not receive diagnostic/preoperative Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).