Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate she has made of the number of NHS trusts in (a) London and (b) England that offer MRI scans for the detection of lobular breast cancer.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s current recommendation is to offer magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the breast to people with invasive breast cancer, to assess tumour size if breast-conserving surgery is being considered for invasive lobular breast cancer (ILBC).

To improve detection of breast cancers including ILBC, the National Institute for Health and Care Research is currently funding a £1.3 million research project to determine whether an abbreviated form of breast MRI can detect breast cancers missed by screening mammography.