Province to lower breast cancer screening age from 50 to 45 by end of next year
Province will use phased-in approach, allowing people to self-refer for screenings at age 40
Manitoba will lower the breast cancer screening age from 50 to 45 by the end of next year in an effort to reduce the risk of getting cancer, the health minister announced Tuesday.
The province will phase in a lower age for self-referred screenings, eventually dropping it to 40, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said in a news release on Tuesday.
Implementation is already underway, Asagwara said, with CancerCare Manitoba leading work to hire more mammography technologists and increase screening appointments for individuals age 50 to 74.
The breast screening program will nearly double its capacity to over 80,000 screening mammograms per year and ensure that "vulnerable people — especially marginalized and low-income women — are able to access the care they need," the minister said.
There were more than 195,000 women age 50 to 74 in Manitoba at the time of the 2021 census, Statistics Canada says. CancerCare Manitoba advises women in that age group to get a mammogram every two years.
Kathleen Cook, the Progressive Conservatives health critic, said that while the Opposition welcomes the "initial step" of reducing the age for screening, the promise to eventually lower it to 40 is "simply not good enough."
"Women's health cannot be left in limbo," and the province needs "concrete action and a solid, transparent plan," Cook said in a statement.
The change comes after a draft of new Canadian screening guidelines suggests that people be allowed to request a mammogram starting at age 40, but that mammograms shouldn't be routinely done on all women and gender diverse people under 50.
The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care — a Public Health Agency of Canada-created panel of health professionals that offers guidance on creating guidelines for health-care practitioners — "does not recommend regular screenings for women under 50 who are of average risk," a spokesperson previously told CBC News.
WATCH: Manitoba dropping the age of breast cancer screening
Dr. Donna Turner, chief of population oncology at CancerCare Manitoba, said widening the ages for breast cancer screening will open the doors for more people to have a conversation and determine whether the procedure is right for them.
False positive screens for breast cancer are more common among people in their 40s, Turner said, and for some patients that comes at the expense of heightened stress.
"We need to make sure that women are really well informed in their 40s," she said. "What this will allow is for women to find their cancers early."
While breast cancer is a major health concern in Canada, with one in eight Canadian women diagnosed in their lifetime, Turner said there hasn't been a significant spike in cases of breast cancer among people in their 40s.
Guidelines from CancerCare Manitoba say early detection through screenings in women age 50 to 74 can reduce mortality from breast cancer by up to 20 to 30 per cent.
Need capacity system-wide: oncology chief
Manitoba currently recommends routine mammogram screening for women and gender-diverse people age 50 to 74 every two years without needing a doctor's referral. Routine screenings aren't recommended for people under 50 or over 74.
Women age 40 to 49 can self-refer to breast screening programs in British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Yukon.
Ontario previously announced it will allow self-referrals for breast cancer screenings beginning at age 40 starting this fall and Saskatchewan is following suit using a phased approach that will be in effect in January.
Both the Northwest Territories and Alberta have routine screening starting at age 45.
Turner said Manitoba's planned breast cancer screening criteria will not fall behind compared to other jurisdictions.
But with a health-care system short of human resources, she said the province has to make sure capacity is in place to accommodate not only more breast cancer screenings, but also diagnostic mammograms, biopsies and surgeries.
"If we expand the number of our screening criteria, all of those numbers downstream are going to be expanded as well," Turner said.
"This is a health system commitment.… Screening doesn't exist sort of in a silo by itself."
Changes to the province's regulations will mean Manitoba will go from 45,000 mammograms a year to roughly 80,000, the province said in a news release Tuesday.
"We're going to have to close to double our capacity over time," Turner said, including hiring more mammography technologists and clerks.
"It's a big percentage when you start thinking, and it is a very scarce resource that we have."
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With files from Alana Cole and Santiago Arias Orozco