The co-chair of a Canadian health panel says there's no need for women to start having routine mammograms at age 40, despite new draft recommendations from an American task force calling for the change.
Doctor Guylene Theriault of the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care says she does not see any reason to change the guidelines, which currently recommend women in both countries get screened between the ages of 50 and 74.
But Hannah Jensen, spokeswoman for the Health Ministry in Ontario, says the province is exploring lowering the screening age to 40, and British Columbia's health minister says the province will review the U-S recommendations to determine if any change will be made to its screening program.
The U-S Preventive Services Task Force released draft recommendations earlier this week, saying screening should start a decade earlier and be done every two years because recent evidence suggests that would reduce deaths.
Theriault says the Canadian task force does not intend to update guidelines set in 2018 because the benefits of earlier screening do not outweigh the risks of false-positive results and overdiagnosis when harmless tumours are detected.
But Calgary resident Heather Campbell says that's the wrong approach because she was diagnosed with cancer at age 44 despite no family history of the disease, which is more likely to strike Black women at a younger age.