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Canadians are receiving fewer mammograms post COVID.
That’s according to Dr. Brenda Farnquist, an Interventional Hematology Radiologist and Breast Imager in British Columbia. She said that province is currently at its lowest uptake of women getting screening mammography.
Two of the top reasons she believes why that is is because women are afraid of radiation and the compression can hurt.
“If you travel regularly or take one international flight per year, your radiation exposure is higher than a mammogram,” Farnquist said.
“I have had my annual mammograms because my mom had breast cancer, so I started a little bit earlier, and it’s not comfortable. The only thing what I can tell women is its very short.”
Farnquist notes catching breast cancer at an early stage is your best prognosis.
According to the Government of Canada, breast screening is used to look for cancer in people who don't have any signs or symptoms. It aims to detect cancer at an earlier stage, when treatment is more likely to be successful.
In Canada, one in eight women are expected to develop breast cancer during their lifetime and one in 36 will die of it. In 2024, an estimated 30,500 women in Canada were diagnosed with breast cancer and 5,500 were expected to die of it.
This represents 25 per cent of all new cases of cancer and 13 per cent of all cancer deaths expected in 2024 among females living in Canada.
In total, 83 per cent of the cases of breast cancer occur in females over 50 years old.
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