ACS Research Suggests COVID-19 Will Disrupt Cancer Reporting for Years to Come

A recently published JAMA Surgery Special Communications by authors, including ACS Cancer Programs Director Heidi Nelson, MD, FACS, outlines significant ways that the COVID-19 pandemic destabilized usual patterns of cancer care as reported in the National Cancer Database (NCDB).

The study offers a detailed look into the complexities and variations that occurred in cancer reporting as a result of the pandemic. Key finding include:

• The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with significant changes in diagnoses of all cancer types in 2020, with a 14.4% overall decline in the number of reported cancer cases in the NCDB compared with the prior year. This decline represents more than 200,000 cancer cases that were not diagnosed and/or treated at CoC facilities.
• These missing cancer cases are expected to appear in 2021 data and beyond, potentially at more advanced stages.
• Overall, the proportion of patients diagnosed with early stage disease decreased from March to June 2020, followed by a corresponding increase in the proportion of those diagnosed with late-stage disease, peaking in April 2020 and correcting to prior years’ percentages by July 2020. However, the 2020 stage distributions for specific types of cancer varied.

Future analysis of NCDB data may also reveal more details about the pandemic and provide valuable information to healthcare organizations about how to be better prepared for emergencies.

“Particularly in the first 3 months of the pandemic, healthcare resources were significantly diverted and hospitals were overwhelmed. There were so many things we didn’t know that we weren’t prepared for. How could we be?” Dr. Nelson said. “But I don’t think we should bury our heads in the sand to what happened, and not be aware of the negative things that happened to patients besides COVID-19 infection. If anything, this data shows us that you didn’t have to be a COVID-19 patient to suffer during the pandemic.”