Site-specific patterns of early-stage cancer diagnosis during the COVID-19 pandemic.
JNCI Cancer Spectr
; 8(3)2024 Apr 30.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38521544
ABSTRACT
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 of age) with newly diagnosed cancer from 2019 to 2020 in the US National Cancer Database and calculated the change in proportion of early-stage to late-stage cancers using a weighted linear regression. Disruptions in early-stage diagnosis were greater than in late-stage diagnosis (17% vs 12.5%). Melanoma demonstrated the greatest relative decrease in early-stage vs late-stage diagnosis (22.9% vs 9.2%), whereas the decrease was similar for pancreatic cancer. Compared with 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.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Early Detection of Cancer
/
Pandemics
/
COVID-19
/
Melanoma
/
Neoplasm Staging
/
Neoplasms
Country/Region as subject:
America do norte
Language:
En
Journal:
JNCI Cancer Spectr
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States