Pattern of breast cancer presentation during the COVID-19 pandemic: results from a cohort study in the UK.

Plain language summary During the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, breast cancer screening services were halted across the UK. Patients were also encouraged to stay home and to seek medical attention only in an emergency. The authors hypothesized that this might have led to delays in presentation to breast cancer clinics or missed cancer diagnoses. While patients are at home with undiagnosed breast cancer, the cancer can grow and spread. The authors evaluated whether these delays in presentation led to patients presenting with more advanced breast cancers when they finally presented to a breast cancer clinic. The authors collected data on breast cancer stages for a patient group in 2020 (during the height of the pandemic) and compared them with a patient group in 2019. The authors' results did indeed show that patients presented, on average, with more advanced breast cancers in 2020 compared with 2019.