ArticleBreast cancer research and treatment2023
Changes in breast cancer treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic: a Dutch population-based study.
Article in Breast cancer research and treatment, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Impact of Reimbursement on the Utilisation of Gene Expression Profiles and Chemotherapy Decision-Making in Dutch Breast Cancer Patients: A Population-Based Study.International journal of cancer · 2026Article
- Effect of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on the opportunity to treat patients with breast cancer: experience at a reference cancer center in Mexico City.Cancer causes & control : CCC · 2026Observational
- Surgical Timing and Safety of Breast Cancer Operations After COVID-19: A Prospective-Only Meta-Analysis of Cohort Studies.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on systemic anti-cancer therapy in patients with breast cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of pharmaceutical policy and practice · 2026Review
- Trends in the Management of Small HER2-Positive Breast Cancers.Annals of surgical oncology · 2025Article
- Changes in breast cancer incidence and surgical treatment in Baden-Württemberg (Germany) during the COVID-19 pandemic.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Retrospective Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Primary Breast Cancer Care.Breast care (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Time to Treatment in Surgical Oncology: A National Registry Study in The Netherlands.Cancers · 2024Article
- Real-world data on neoadjuvant chemotherapy with dual-anti HER2 therapy in HER2 positive breast cancer.BMC cancer · 2024Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on management of surgically treated laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma.Biomolecules & biomedicine · 2024Article
- Impact of the Coronavirus disease pandemic on early breast cancer.Frontiers in oncology · 2024Article
- Resumption of Intravenous Anti-Cancer Therapy in Breast Cancer: A Real-World Experience During the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic.Cancer management and research · 2024Article
- Collateral effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on endocrine treatments for breast and prostate cancer in the UK: a cohort study.Therapeutic advances in medical oncology · 2024Article
- Comparison of adverse effects of anti-tumor therapy for breast cancer shortly after COVID-19 diagnosis vs. the control period.Frontiers in oncology · 2023Article
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20 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeWe aimed to compare (1) treatments and time intervals between treatments of breast cancer patients diagnosed during and before the COVID-19 pandemic, and (2) the number of treatments started during and before the pandemic.
methodsWomen were selected from the Netherlands Cancer Registry. For aim one, odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were calculated to compare the treatment of women diagnosed within four periods of 2020: pre-COVID (weeks 1-8), transition (weeks 9-12), lockdown (weeks 13-17), and care restart (weeks 18-26), with data from 2018/2019 as reference. Wilcoxon rank-sums test was used to compare treatment intervals, using a two-sided p-value < 0.05. For aim two, number of treatments started per week in 2020 was compared with 2018/2019.
resultsWe selected 34,097 women for aim one. Compared to 2018/2019, neo-adjuvant chemotherapy was less likely for stage I (OR 0.24, 95%CI 0.11-0.53), stage II (OR 0.63, 95%CI 0.47-0.86), and hormone receptor+/HER2- tumors (OR 0.55, 95%CI 0.41-0.75) diagnosed during transition. Time between diagnosis and first treatment decreased for patients diagnosed during lockdown with a stage I (p < 0.01), II (p < 0.01) or III tumor (p = 0.01). We selected 30,002 women for aim two. The number of neo-adjuvant endocrine therapies and surgeries starting in week 14, 2020, increased by 339% and 18%, respectively. The number of adjuvant chemotherapies decreased by 42% in week 15 and increased by 44% in week 22.
conclusionThe pandemic and subsequently altered treatment recommendations affected multiple aspects of the breast cancer treatment strategy and the number of treatments started per week.
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