I attended the first annual Canadian Cancer Research Conference in November which brought a diverse group of cancer researchers together.  In one of the plenary session, Dr. Martin Yaffe, a medical physicist whose expertise is in breast cancer and mammography, gave a talk on the recent recommendation on the guidelines from the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care for women with an average risk of developing breast cancer. The controversy is this:  women who do not have increased risk of breast cancer due to BRAC gene mutations or family history of breast cancer, under age 50, no longer recommended mammography.  Even more controversial is that self-examination does not have any benefits in any age group.

 

This guideline was first brought to media attention by the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/conditions/cancer/breast-cancer/new-breast-cancer-screening-guidelines-inflame-debate-add-to-confusion/article2243503/ 

 

Subsequenty, Martin Yaffe wrote why he rejected the new screening recommendation: 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/conditions/cancer/breast-cancer/why-i-reject-most-of-the-new-breast-cancer-screening-recommendations/article2252072/

 

In his talk, he provided additional reasons for the screening program: a)  recommendations were not based on phase 3 randomized clinical trials b) current technologies of digital mammography have even better image signal to noise than those used in randomized trials, and c) the task force did not consult the scientific experts at large prior to understand all the nuances of non-randomized versus randomized trials. 

 

Being a medical physicist, when I visit friends and families during this time of the year, I do ask if they had done their annual health check. Maybe you should do the same so I won’t be so strange, but one must think through this task force recommendation to make sure that it made sense.

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