Canadian doctors are using 'outdated' guidelines to screen for cancer, experts warn

Family doctors use national guidelines to decide whether and when to send their patients for routine cancer screenings — but experts say Canadians' lives are at risk because those guidelines use old data, lack expert advice, and are updated too infrequently.Canada's national guidelines recommend against breast cancer screening for women in their 40s, despite growing evidence in favour of it.

"These guidelines impact millions of Canadians. The consequences are grim. Current task force guidelines often limit access to critical life-saving screening," said Dr. Shiela Appavoo, an Edmonton-based radiologist. "Unfortunately, a lot of family physicians are taught and trained to follow the task force guidelines," Appavoo said.

"They asked for a mammogram and they were told, 'No, you don't need one because you're in your 40s,'" Wilkinson said. "It's heartbreaking."that compared breast cancer statistics from provinces that screened women in their 40s to stats from provinces that followed the task force guidelines. Her study found that earlier screening led to significantly improved survival rates.

"They are harming Canadians because they are leading us to diagnose cancers at a later stage when we know survival is worse and when the costs of treatment are more," Wilkinson said. The task force also doesn't offer different guidelines for screening based on a patient's ethnicity, despite research that shows some populations are diagnosed with certain cancers at earlier ages. Inuit, for example, are more than twice as likely as the rest of the population to be diagnosed with lung cancer, according to

A woman receives a mammogram to screen for breast cancer. A member of the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care says the panel needs to balance the risk of over-diagnosis when determining its screening recommendations. That's when a patient receives treatment that is potentially more harmful than the cancer itself.

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