Major overhaul ordered for a group setting Canadian cancer screening guidelines

A major overhaul is expected from the national body that releases Canadian cancer screening guidelines.

The unions were ordered by the Federal Health Minister, After an external review Task Force on Preventive Health Care.

The task force is a hand length panel installed by the federal government to publish national guidelines for family doctors, which advises them to send their patients to send their patients for regular examination of various diseases including common cancer.

But the panel is Criticized over years To fail to take fully expert advice, to use old research and slow down to update its guidelines. Many recommendations of the task force are more than a decade old.

A doctor of the Ottawa family, Dr. Anna Wilkinson said, “The cancer screening turns into an existence, which helps in taking care of cancer patients.

“We know that technology and medical science changes so fast,” he said. “We are not speeding up and it is affecting people’s health.”

The Health Minister suspended the task force’s work last year and ordered a review after being under a rising investigation To continue the recommendation Regular breast cancer screening begins only at the age of 50.

The guideline flew in front of the evidence that the screening should start from 40 – supported by the advice Canadian Cancer Society And already implemented in many Provincial breast screening program. Cancer disease Canadians are usually diagnosed in people The age of 30 to 49 years is now breast cancer.

“We know that we are seeing the beginning of the greater early age of breast cancer,” Wilkinson said. “We need those guidelines that correspond to the changes.”

A ‘pressing requirement’

To be more accountable and transparent on the Task Force, the review calls, streamlines their guidelines updates and ensure that experts are consulted, citing “the need to modernize its approach”.

The task force has been criticized for other recommendations including cervical, prostate and lung cancer screening. For example, its guidelines on cervical cancer have not been updated from 2013, and recommended against screening for HPVs, viruses that cause cervical cancer. The UK and Australia replaced PAP tests with HPV screening in 2016 and 2017 respectively, as HPV may be detected very soon.

Wilkinson said that she is hoping how the task force operates, there will be major changes for this, especially since many primary care doctors are trained to use those guidelines while deciding to refer to their patients for testing.

He got his own research Canadian women who lived in the provinces, where the screening of breast cancer started from 40, was a better chance to survive than those who were shown in the 50s.

The initial screening would have changed the life of Caroline Holland.

At the age of 43, she discovered lumps in her breasts. By that point, the cancer had spread so aggressively that he needed chemotherapy, radiation and a double mastectomy.

A mammogram could soon catch her cancer, but she was never one. His family physicians were following the guidelines of the task force, stating that he did not require a regular screening up to 50.

Holland said, “If my cancer was caught with mammography in the first 40, my treatment and result would have been quite different.”

In a statement, the Task Force said that it is ready to help bring changes, which will “increase the reliability of the task force,” saying that its work is known for its strict evidence-based guidelines at the international level. “

“The recommendations in this report are not only about modernizing the approach, but also to ensure that preventive health care remains responsible for developing scientific evidence, inclusive of diverse approaches, comprised of real -world delivery settings and local public health priorities,” said.

The recommendations are expected to be implemented by April 2026.