New poll suggests majority of Canadians in favour of lowering breast cancer screening age | CBC News

A majority of Canadians support lowering the age for regular breast cancer screenings from age 50 to 40, a new survey by the non-profit organization Breast Cancer Canada and the Angus Reid Institute suggests.

The study comes as the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, an organization created by the federal government to develop clinical practice guidelines, is set to announce updated guidelines on breast cancer screenings this fall.

The task force currently recommends screenings for women aged 50 to 69 every two to three years. 

However, in June, it announced it would expedite its scheduled review of the guidelines after the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force issued a draft recommendation in May that screenings begin at age 40. 

The Breast Cancer Canada and Angus Reid survey asked 1,510 Canadians who are members of the Angus Reid Forum in August about lowering the breast cancer screening age, whether Canada should gather more race-based health data and whether they would be interested in sharing health challenges if it would improve care for others. 

It found that 89 per cent of those surveyed said breast cancer screenings should begin under the age of 50. 

The survey also found that 79 per cent believe Canada should be collecting race-based data on cancer screening rates to address barriers to accessing care. Eighty per cent reported they “wish their experiences with health challenges” could be used to inform research to help others, according to the news release from the non-profit. 

Breast Cancer Canada has also launched a breast cancer registry that will track first-person experiences of people with breast cancer for the next decade.

The amount of support for lowering the age for screening was higher than anticipated, said Kimberly Carson, the CEO of Breast Cancer Canada.

“What the public would like to see is better access to screenings and detection. The sooner we can detect it, the easier the treatment becomes. And I think that message is received, the public knows that,” she said. 

Current guidelines are outdated, says physician

The Canadian task force relies on guidelines created in 2018. It cites concerns about overdiagnosis when patients are screened at a younger age, and concerns about false positives. 

However, the data the task force has used to create those guidelines is decades old, and does not take into account for differences in when the disease manifests in people of colour, said Dr. Toni Zhong, the director of the breast reconstruction program at the Universal Health Network in Toronto, who is not involved in the study. 

“So relying on data that’s 20 to 30 years old, not only are they unreliable for patients, I don’t think they serve our current population well,” she said.

The U.S. Preventive Service Task Force says on its website that Black women are 40 per cent more likely to die from breast cancer than White women, and that ensuring Black women are screened at 40 is an “important first step.”

There are a lack of studies in Canada on Black women and breast and cervical cancer rates, as Canada does not routinely track race-based health data, a 2019 study by physicians at the University of Toronto found.

Zhong said she hopes the Canadian task force comes up with renewed guidelines that lower the screening age.

One in every eight Canadian women are expected to develop breast cancer, and one in 33 will die from it, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. 

Cancer survivor says her doctor didn’t want to test her

Zhong said she’s glad to see a survey spark a discussion around lowering the screening age. 

“I don’t think anyone can be too young to have breast cancer,” she said. 

In her practice, she said she’s seen too many younger women be dismissed despite having lumps, only to be later diagnosed with cancer. 

That’s the experience Robyn Goldman said she had with her family physician when she made an appointment over two years ago regarding a lump in her breast, she said. 

Goldman, who was in her early 30s, said her doctor told her a mammogram wasn’t necessary due to her age.

“The response that I got was, ‘You’re young, you’re healthy, you have no family history of breast cancer. You just have dense breasts’,” she said. But Goldman, who lives in Toronto, said she noticed the lump didn’t feel like the rest of her breast tissue.

She ended up going to the emergency room to be examined. Goldman was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 33, in October 2021. She has triple negative breast cancer, Stage 1,which is a type of breast cancer that lacks receptors and means there are fewer effective paths to treatment. It’s known to be more aggressive as it spreads fast, according to the American Cancer Society.

Goldman joined Breast Cancer Canada’s campaign for lowering the age for screening, because she doesn’t want someone else to have to convince their doctor they need a screening, she said.

“Part of me is very angry.” she said. “If I would have waited, not only until I was 40, but to the standard 50, my outcome would have been different. I wouldn’t be here.”