The percentage of breast cancer survivors in Canada has doubled in the past 15 years, according to a study by a researcher at the University of Toronto.
The study, recently published in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, found that over the 15-year period from 2007 to 2021, 370,756 patients (2.1% of the adult female population at Canada in 2022) were diagnosed with breast cancer and 86% of these women would have survived breast cancer by 2022.
“This indicates that the prevalence of breast cancer survivors in the Canadian female population has doubled and there are 2.5 times more survivors since the last estimate in 2007,” said researcher Amy Kirkham.
Treatments that have lowered breast cancer death rates, however, are believed to have short- and long-term side effects, which could increase the risk of death from other causes including heart disease.