Experts estimate the prevalence of breast cancer survivors in Canada

Experts estimate the prevalence of breast cancer survivors in Canada

It was the information she couldn't find that led Amy Kirkham, an assistant professor in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE), to her latest discovery.

Asked by the Canadian Women's Heart Health Alliance to co-author a scientific statement on the state of women's heart health in Canada in 2020, Kirkham - whose research focuses on preventing and managing the risk of heart disease associated with breast cancer treatment - needed to know what percentage of the Canadian female population has breast cancer.

But the last statistic she could find – one percent – ​​was from 2007.

Almost 15 years had passed and I could not find a recent citation about the prevalence of breast cancer survivors in Canada. The breast cancer mortality rate had improved by 26 percent over that period, so I suspected that number was no longer accurate.”

Amy Kirkham, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Toronto

So Kirkham, in collaboration with Katarzyna Jerzak, a medical oncologist at Sunnybrook Odette Cancer Center and assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at U of T's Temerty Faculty of Medicine, launched a new study that provides a current estimate of the prevalence of breast cancer survivors in Canada in 2022 using the annual Canadian Cancer Society Cancer Statistics Reports.

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 percent of the adult female population in Canada in 2022) were diagnosed with breast cancer and 86 percent 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 that there are 2.5 times more survivors since the last estimate in 2007,” says Kirkham.

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The previous estimate did not include the survivor age group, but according to Kirkham and Jerzak's new estimate, breast cancer survivors represent one percent of Canadian women in the typical working and/or child-rearing age group (20 to 64 years) and 5.4 percent of older Canadian women (over 65 years).

But it's not all good news.

Many of the treatments that have improved breast cancer mortality rates also cause short- and long-term side effects, which in turn may increase the risk of death from other causes such as heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, liver disease, and other non-fatal health consequences.

“The leading cause of death in women with breast cancer is heart disease,” says Kirkham.

Such conditions also impact overall healthcare costs.

To demonstrate the excessive healthcare costs associated with heart disease, Kirkham and Jerzak conducted an additional analysis using Canadian data on heart failure hospitalization rates and costs. They found that two percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer between 2007 and 2021 would likely experience a hospitalization for heart failure, costing a total of $66.5 million. Up to 25 percent of these costs, or $16.5 million, exceeded the costs that would be incurred by women without breast cancer.

“Given the excessive healthcare costs, potential for reduced contributions to the workforce, and reduced quality of life associated with long-term side effects and risk of excess death among breast cancer survivors, our work highlights that there is a growing portion of the population that requires services to support recovery from breast cancer treatment,” says Kirkham.

“The goal of my research laboratory is to develop new therapies to improve the health of women recovering from breast cancer.”

Source:

University of Toronto

Reference:

Kirkham, AA, et al. (2022) Prevalence of breast cancer survivors among Canadian women. Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. doi.org/10.6004/jnccn.2022.7028.

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