Pink October is an awareness campaign for breast cancer screening in several countries around the world, including Canada. This is an opportunity to remember that one in eight women will develop this disease during their lifetime. But what role does data play in preventing such tragedies?
The data that hits
According to the Canadian Cancer Society, it is estimated that every day in 2024, 84 Canadian women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. This represents almost 30,500 women during the year, and almost 10% of them will not survive.
While this disease poses a terrible threat to women, it can also most often be detected in time. Three out of four breast cancers in Canada can be cured through early treatment through screening.
Here too, the data is striking: women aged 50 to 74 with an average risk of breast cancer who have a mammogram have a lower risk of dying from it than those who do not undergo such an examination.
Cancer detected early paves the way not only for a greater chance of survival, but also for a reduced duration of treatment and convalescence. Collecting health data on women can therefore significantly improve their lives.
Data made visible
All this information on breast cancer is available not only in Canada, but also in Quebec. According to the Quebec Cancer Registry, in our province, this disease affected nearly 8,045 women and 68 men in 2021.
These statistics can be visible to everyone through dynamic graphs that the government compiles for the population and health professionals within its dashboard intended for monitoring several cancers.
Among other things, this table allows you to visualize the number of new cases, incidence (what this represents in the population) and mortality of cancer according to several key factors, such as age, sex and region of residence. This is key data for an effective prevention policy at the national level, as demonstrated by the Quebec Breast Cancer Screening Program (PQDCS).
Missing data
Despite these advances, data on cancer remain largely incomplete. There have been numerous calls from patients and their representatives to make up for this lack in recent years. But their voices remain too little heard.
On the one hand, Quebec lags behind other Canadian provinces in the collection and dissemination of data on cancer. The Quebec Cancer Registry was recently completed, and the data provided to the population dates back to 2021 only.
On the other hand, the available data is still largely insufficient to allow the implementation of a prevention campaign that targets all the risks affecting the population. Certainly, we know the regional distribution of people affected by breast cancer, so that we can intervene in certain areas as a priority. But we could do much more.
By crossing environmental data with health data, we could assess the impact of factors such as water and air quality on the incidence of cancers and associated mortality. Researchers in Quebec and around the world are already doing this. But we sorely miss this cross-referenced data as Quebecers. They should be included in a comprehensive and up-to-date cancer registry that is accessible to the entire population.
And so, in this month of Pink October, let us remember that beyond screening which remains crucial, health data can also save lives. But to do this, we need to be able to collect them, analyze them and make them our own. In the battle against breast cancer, useful and shared information is perhaps our most formidable weapon.