Abstract
PurposeWith the beginning of 2021, the world has been suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic for more than 1 year. More and more, we are able to evaluate side effects of the pandemic in the healthcare sector. A negative impact on cancer diagnoses is one of them. Careful observation of trends in an academic gyneco-oncological context appears important to identify potential negative developments.MethodsWe analyzed the case number of gynecologic and breast cancer diagnoses in the period from January to June 2020 compared to 2019 and during the period of the first general German lockdown (March 22nd until May 5th 2020). Patients were characterized by age, tumor type, FIGO or TNM stage and presence of symptoms at initial hospital presentation.ResultsThe frequency of newly diagnosed gynecologic and breast cancer cases from beginning of January until end of June changed by − 10% and by − 12% during the lockdown in 2020 compared to 2019. In both periods, reduction of breast cancer cases was relatively larger than decrease of gynecologic cancers. Moreover, median patient age decreased. For the first half of 2020, we found a shift towards higher tumor stages (N+/M1 or FIGO III–IV). During the lockdown period, the appearance of tumor-associated symptoms at diagnosis increased by about 12%.ConclusionThis analysis illustrates the anticipated general decrease in diagnoses of primary cancers during the lockdown periods in 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic for gynecologic and breast cancer cases.
Highlights
In 2020, the world experienced the pandemic spread of a novel virus, known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1]
By February 1st, 2021, there were more than 100 million confirmed cases worldwide and over 2 million deaths due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) [3]
To improve the database with respect to the ongoing pandemic in cancer care departments, we analyzed the development of gynecologic and breast cancer diagnoses during the first half of 2020 compared to 2019 in our academic tertiary center for gynecologic and breast cancer at the LMU Munich University Hospital. In this quality assurance project, we included all patients diagnosed with gynecologic or breast cancer who presented to our academic center at LMU Munich between January and June 2020 compared to the same period in 2019
Summary
In 2020, the world experienced the pandemic spread of a novel virus, known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1]. This virus pandemic claimed immense healthcare resources [2]. Besides departments that primarily treat COVID-19 all other areas of medicine were affected by social distancing restrictions, patients with a SARS-CoV-2 infection as a comorbidity and a massive shift of resources towards the fight against COVID-19. Cancer patients are considered a high-risk group if infected by SARS-CoV-2 [4,5,6,7,8]. In one of the largest reports from Tian et al, they included data from 13,077 patients with
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