As Canada examines revisions to its breast cancer screening guidelines, a new study adds support to the proposal of lowering its screening age to 40 – a move made in the US earlier this year.
When to start breast screening has long been one of the most controversial aspects of mammography.
- In the US, a firestorm erupted in 2009 when the USPSTF withdrew its recommendation that women start in their 40s … a policy that wasn’t rescinded until May.
In Canada, the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care is reviewing its 2018 screening guidelines, which currently advise women to wait until 50 to start routine breast screening, and then be screened every 2-3 years after that.
- The Canadian task force’s 2018 guidelines also don’t mention dense breast tissue, a known risk factor for breast cancer (the FDA earlier this year said it would begin requiring breast density reporting).
Canadian breast specialists have been pushing for the task force to lower the screening age, and their efforts got a boost with a new study that found starting breast screening at age 40 and continuing with it annually saved the greatest number of lives.
Researchers in MDPI used the OncoSim-Breast microsimulation model to simulate various screening regimens in a cohort of 1.5M Canadian women born in 1975. They assessed the earlier screening strategy by various metrics, including impact on breast cancer mortality, number needed to be screened to avert one breast cancer death, and stage at diagnosis, finding …
- Annual screening starting at age 40 had the biggest mortality reduction compared to no screening, at 7.9 fewer deaths per 1,000 women, compared to biennial 40-74 (5.9) and biennial 50-74 (4.6)
- Annual screening from 40-74 had the lowest number of women who must be screened to avert one death (127) compared to biennial 40-74 (169) and biennial 50-74 (220)
- Earlier annual screening would produce the greatest stage shift to more early invasive (stage 1 and stage 2a) cancers detected compared to other regimens
The Takeaway
The Canadian task force is expected to complete its review by the end of the year – where it will land on the issue is anyone’s guess. It’s hoped that the new study – as well as other research on mammography’s effectiveness in Canada published in the last couple years – will spur the group to lower the screening age. But breast imaging experts we spoke with are skeptical given the task force’s preference for randomized clinical trials, which haven’t been performed in Canada on breast screening in decades.
