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A magnetic resonance imaging test is highly effective at detecting a life-threatening pregnancy complication called placenta accreta, researchers report.

The condition occurs when the placenta surrounding a fetus attaches too deeply to a woman’s uterus. During delivery, the placenta can pull out parts of the uterine wall, rupturing blood vessels and putting the mother at risk of severe hemorrhaging.

“Due to the increase in cesarean sections and other surgeries that leave scarring on the uterine wall, coupled with women giving birth later in life, the incidence of accreta has increased dramatically over the past 20 years,” lead researcher Dr. Reena Malhotra, a radiologist at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, said in a news release.

Routine prenatal ultrasound often detects placenta accreta, but can’t always definitively diagnose subtle cases, the study authors noted.

In this study, Malhotra and colleagues compared MRI findings and surgical and/or pathology results from 71 women who underwent MRI after a suspicious prenatal ultrasound or clinical examination or because they had significant risk factors for placenta accreta.

The researchers found that MRI was 90.1 percent accurate in detecting the presence of accreta.

“Our findings demonstrate that MRI is an extremely useful adjunct to ultrasound for assessing this potentially life-threatening obstetric condition,” Malhotra said.

Body weight and co-existing health problems don’t explain why black colon cancer patients have lower survival rates than whites, U.S. researchers say.

In an effort to determine why blacks have lower survival rates than whites for nearly all cancers, including colon cancers, investigators have explored a variety factors, such as differences in health care access, exposure to risk factors and tumor characteristics. However, the role these factors play in survival rate disparities remains unclear.

In the new study, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham looked at how weight and comorbidity (the presence of other diseases in addition to colon cancer) affected colon cancer survival in 496 patients who had surgery for colon cancer between 1981 and 2002.

Black patients were 34 percent more likely than white patients to have died by 2008, according to the study published online Nov. 23 and in the Dec. 15 print issue of the journal Cancer.

Among patients with early-stage cancer, the risk of death from any cause was 2.2 times higher in those with a high level of comorbidity. Among patients with advanced cancer, being underweight was associated with an 87 percent increased risk of death. However, being overweight or obese reduced the risk of death by 42 percent among patients with stage IV colon cancer, the study authors noted.

These findings were the same regardless of race, which suggests that differences in weight or comorbidity don’t explain why black patients are more likely to die than white patients, the researchers concluded.

“Further efforts are needed to identify the basis for the survival difference by race for patients with colon cancer. A greater understanding of this complex issue may help eliminate the disparity,” research leader Upender Manne said in a news release from the journal’s publisher.