Site-specific patterns of early-stage cancer diagnosis during the COVID-19 pandemic
Ce dossier présente un ensemble d'articles concernant la prise en charge des cancers durant la crise sanitaire liée à la COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread disruptions in cancer care. We hypothesized that the greatest disruptions in diagnosis occurred in screen-detected cancers. We identified patients (≥18 years) newly diagnosed with cancer from 2019 to 2020 in the United States National Cancer Database and calculated the change in proportion of early to late-stage cancers using a weighted linear regression. Disruptions in early-stage diagnosis were greater than late-stage diagnosis (17% vs 12.5%). Melanoma demonstrated the greatest relative decrease in early- vs late-stage diagnosis (22.9 vs 9.2%), while the decrease was similar for pancreatic cancer. Compared to breast cancer, cervical, melanoma, prostate, colorectal, and lung cancers showed the greatest disruptions in early-stage diagnosis. Uninsured patients experienced greater disruptions than privately insured patients. Disruptions in cancer diagnosis in 2020 had a larger impact on early-stage disease, particularly screen-detected cancers. Our study supports emerging evidence that primary care visits may play a critical role in early melanoma detection.
JNCI Cancer Spectrum , résumé, 2023