Ottawa/IBNS: Canadian health authorities have been urged by doctors and breast cancer survivors to follow the example of the US task force and lower the recommended age for regular screening mammograms to 40.

The US Preventive Services Task Force's draft recommendation, released Tuesday, said "new and more inclusive science" calls for screening mammograms every two years for women between the ages of 40 and 74.

According to previous recommendations, average-risk patients were screened beginning at age 50.

The current screening guidelines from the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care daing back to 2018 cite concerns about overdiagnosis when patients are screened at a younger age, leading to unnecessary treatment of cancer that wouldn't have caused illness.

For women aged 40 to 49, the task force recommends against mammograms unless they're at an increased risk of breast cancer.

"The balance of benefits and harms is less favourable for women of this age than for older women," the task force says on its website.

Task force co-chair Dr. Guylène Thériault said patients need to be aware of the risks of earlier screening, which can also include false positives.

"You need to be informed of the pros and cons and then decide for yourself with your values, your preferences, where you are in your life, if screening is something worth it, or is something that you're going to forgo," Thériault was reported saying.

The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Care's guidelines are reviewed every five years and are set to be evaluated again this year.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, one in every eight Canadian women are expected to develop breast cancer and one in 33 will die from it.

An estimated 83 percent cases of breast cancer occur in people over the age of 50.

(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)