Mount Sinai Hospital event to benefit breast cancer research

Pamela Goodwin
Dr. Pamela Goodwin

Breast cancer will affect one in nine Canadian women during their lifetimes. According to statistics from the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, an estimated 25,000 women in Canada will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 5,000 women will die from it in 2016.

The Power of Pink luncheon in support of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the Marvelle Koffler Breast Centre at Mount Sinai Hospital will take place Sept. 29 at the Arcadian Court.

The event will feature guest speaker Jane Lauder, granddaughter of Estée Lauder and global brand president of Clinique.

It will also feature keynote addresses by Myra Biblowit, president and CEO of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and Dr. Pamela Goodwin, director of the Marvelle Koffler Breast Centre, holder of the Marvelle Koffler Chair in Breast Research and senior scientist in Mount Sinai’s Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute.

Goodwin’s research focuses on lifestyle and related factors that affect patient survival rates.

“The centre is always seeking new ways to serve our patients. For example, we want to be able to expand our services for women diagnosed with breast cancer in pregnancy. There is also an exciting opportunity to give women who may be worried about developing the disease a tool to assess their risk and choose healthier lifestyles through diet and exercise choices to reduce their risk of developing breast cancer,” Goodwin said.

“Post treatment, we offer a program on nutrition, exercise and coping with the transition back to their life before breast cancer. The good news is that a study that I led several years ago found that long-term breast cancer survivors had no significant differences in quality of life compared with women with no history of breast cancer.”

According to Goodwin, breast cancer occurs randomly in roughly 70 per cent of cases. In other cases, there may be a genetic connection, such as BRCA1 and BRCA mutations, which are more prevalent in Ashkenazi Jewish population. Women who are genetic carriers have a higher risk of developing breast and ovarian cancers and are offered intensified screening and risk reducing options.

The Koffler Breast Centre has seen approximately 33,000 women annually since opening its doors in 1995.

“Even though breast cancer is still the most common cancer among Canadian women, outcomes have changed dramatically since we first opened. For example, someone diagnosed today with a small node-negative breast cancer has less than a five per cent chance of recurrence. The average woman diagnosed with breast cancer today probably has a 90 per cent chance of surviving it,” Goodwin said. n

For tickets, visit: http://support.supportsinai.com and click on the events link.