Thank you so much, Ms. Zarrillo. I'm so sorry about your experience.
I hear this and see this almost every week, and you are not alone. There are many women like you, and we're here today to do a better job for women in their forties, when they are in the prime of their lives and are productive members of society and parents.
Breast cancer doesn't just affect a woman; it affects the whole family. It affects grandparents, spouses and children, and this is why we are working to change these guidelines.
These guidelines cause tremendous confusion, and unfortunately, even using the estimated number of one per thousand lives saved by screening but lost if you don't screen women in their forties in Canada, we estimate this translates into 400 to 600 women's lives lost per year. This has a huge impact on Canadian society.
The technology has improved dramatically. I mentioned the 20% to 40%. This is based on digital mammography, which we now use and is particularly better for women with dense breast tissue. We also need digital breast tomosynthesis, which is another technology shown to increase cancer detection rates by up to 40%. It is being used in multiple centres in the United States and is slowly being used in Canada.
Reducing cancer and diagnosing it at stage 1 are possible. We now know from randomized trials that we can screen women with dense breasts with an MRI and reduce their interval cancers by 80%. They are diagnosed at stage 1.
This is all the technology we can use to inform up-to-date evidence.