MR staging of endometrial cancer: needed or wanted?

Over the last Christmas and New Year period one of our ‘urogenital’ magnetic resonance (MR) lists which happened to fall on a public holiday in two consecutive weeks was lost. Just prior to the holiday one of our senior colleagues came to the department seeking an urgent MR examination of a young women for whom ovarian cancer was suspected on the basis of an ‘indeterminate’ ultrasound examination. He thought she probably had complex benign disease and that MR imaging would confirm his suspicions and allow a simple resection rather than cancer surgery. We looked at our packed diary and pointed to a handful of pending request cards. He made a wry comment that he could probably do without most of the endometrial cancer staging requests as they had far less impact on how he, as a Cancer Centre surgeon, managed his patients than did other gynaecological MR examinations. A lively discussion ensued.