Comfort in Whole-Body MRI Testing May Ease Anxiety in LFS Population

Feedback from families indicates a need to make whole-body MRI testing for Li-Fraumeni Syndrome (LFS)–associated cancers less anxiety-provoking with a greater emphasis on comfort, according to Lisa J. States, MD.

CancerNetwork® spoke with States, chair of the “Early Detection and Screening: Radiology” session at the 7th Annual LFS Association (LFSA) Symposium, about what she hopes colleagues and conference attendees will take away from the presentations highlighted at the symposium.

States, a professor of Clinical Radiology at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as director of the Section of Oncologic Imaging and the endowed chair in Molecular Imaging at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, began by expressing a hope that colleagues will see that experts are working hard to ensure accurate MRI testing of patients with LFS to detect cancers. She followed up by highlighting a sentiment disclosed by families of patients who may express anxiety related to MRI testing.

According to States, the psychosocial aspect of undergoing a scan is a big focus in the field. She concluded by emphasizing an initiative within the field to help mitigate anxiety expressed by both pediatric and adult patients and their families by increasing the comfortability of testing.

Transcript:

What I would love for [colleagues] to take away is that we are working hard to make sure that we are as accurate as possible. We did have some feedback from families that was helpful. We will work a bit harder to make these tests less anxiety-provoking and maybe a bit more comfortable, especially for adults. We work hard with pediatrics to make these tests comfortable and make them a bit easier. But what we realized at this session is that the adults need help with that too. That is one of our big focuses: the psychosocial aspects of getting a scan. We can work on that.