TORONTO - A preventable cancer is on the rise among Canadian women.
Rates of cervical cancer are increasing among women aged 35 to 54, despite advances in both screening and HPV vaccination, and experts are urging women not to put off getting checked.
For Shannon Pethick, the warning signs were there, but she initially ignored them. In 2010, at the age of 32, she began experiencing prolonged bleeding and sharp pain before eventually seeing a nurse practitioner and having a Pap smear.
“I got the phone call that they had found cancer cells on my cervix,” she said.
Pethick says the diagnosis changed her life forever. She underwent intensive chemotherapy, radiation and brachytherapy, a form of internal radiation. Looking back, she believes all of it could have been avoided if she had listened to her body sooner.
“The tests and the treatments and the exhaustion … I wouldn’t wish that on anybody,” she says. “And there are so many ways to not have to go through that. If you’re diligent and you’re keeping on top of it and you’re listening to your body,” she said.
Cervical cancer is one of the most preventable forms of the disease. Early screening can detect precancerous cells, while the HPV vaccine protects against the primary high-risk strains of human papillomavirus that cause cancer.
“We’ve had a huge change in technology, from what you knew as your mom’s Pap smear to where we are today where we are using HPV screening in addition to screening abnormal cells,” said Dr. Julie Anne Francis, a gynecologic oncologist and surgeon at Ontario’s Lakeridge Health.
But while screening itself has evolved significantly, the Canadian Cancer Society says cervical cancer rates in Canada are climbing, with estimates that 1,700 women will be diagnosed with the disease this year and 450 will die from it.
According to Francis, one of the biggest gaps lies in follow-up care.
“Part of the problem we have is losing people once they have an abnormal test,” she said. “So we really need to work on what sorts of technologies we have available to make sure that we recall all of the women who have had an abnormal test,” she said.
Francis says there are many reasons why women might skip follow-up care.
“Sometimes patients may not appreciate that the test was abnormal, or they may have a fear of follow up,” she says. “Some people, when they see the abnormal result, leap to the idea that they have a cancer but having an abnormal result does not mean you have a cancer. Often it provides us an opportunity to prevent that cancer from happening.”
Experts also point to slowing uptake of the HPV vaccine, as well as the fact that many Canadians don’t have a primary care physician, who often administers Pap tests.
Pethick hopes her story brings more awareness to the importance of early screening so other women don’t have to go through what she did.
“It literally changed my life. But I’m still here, and I get to tell my story,” she says. “And I’m very grateful for that, because I know there’s a lot of people who didn’t come out the same way I did.”
