Every woman deserves to know her own risk to develop breast cancer during her lifetime. Kudos to Toronto’s Women’s College Hospital team offering gene-testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutated proteins to whoever wishes to know it. The women that are aware of their extremely high risk could benefit from tailored screening “breakthrough” techniques that are currently available.

Translating in numbers*: an “average” woman at age 40 without any risk factors and without a BRCA gene has the 11.3% to develop a breast cancer during her entire life compared to the population. If she carries a mutation in the BRCA gene, her risk would be 58.9% for BRCA1 & 62.1% for BRCA2. In other words, her risk to develop a breast cancer in the next  10 years (19.7% & 11.3%, respectively)  would be much higher to the risk of the woman age 50 (allowed to start mammography screening by the Canadian Task Force) developing a breast cancer during her entire lifetime, which is around 9.9%!!! * Cuzik, J IBIS tool.