Health pros blast decision to keep Canada’s breast screening age at 50

Several cancer experts, surgeons and radiologists swiftly condemned a national task force’s draft decision not to lower the recommended routine breast cancer screening age to 40 on Thursday.

Although they refrained from lowering the age for routine screening, the task force did suggest women age 40 to 49 be eligible for mammograms every two to three years if they want one after learning the harms and benefits of early screening, ideally from a conversation with their health-care provider.

Seely was one of the experts who reviewed evidence to inform the guidance, and said the task force did not put enough emphasis on newer studies that show benefits to screening starting at age 40 and relied too heavily on randomized control trials that were conducted decades ago. “By saying that they should not start until 50 puts them all at a big disadvantage and is one of the reasons why we see in Canada that they’re more likely to be diagnosed at advanced stage of breast cancer.”

The task force said “more research is needed” to determine whether or not earlier screening should be recommended for racialized women. “The task force concern that a false positive would cause distress, frankly I don’t buy it. I know that for the women in my life, they’d much rather have a false positive that they get to prove negative than not to be tested,” Holland said.

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