ArticleAnnals of surgical oncology2023
Growing Deficit in New Cancer Diagnoses 2 Years Into the COVID-19 Pandemic: A National Multicenter Study.
Article in Annals of surgical oncology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 5 citations in OpenAlex.
- Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Lung Cancer Screening and Diagnosis: A Systematic Review.Cancers · 2026Review
- Disparities in Colorectal Cancer Screening and Diagnoses in the COVID Era: A Study of the VA Health System.Annals of surgical oncology · 2025Article
- COVID-19 and Rates of Cancer Diagnosis in the US.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- Disparities in Colorectal Cancer Screening.Annals of surgical oncology · 2024Article
- To overcome medical gap in screening and surveillance of colorectal cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic.Intestinal research · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundLarge decreases in cancer diagnoses were seen early in the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the evolution of these deficits since the end of 2020 and the advent of widespread vaccination is unknown.
methodsThis study examined data from the Veterans Health Administration (VA) from 1 January 2018 through 28 February 2022 and identified patients with screening or diagnostic procedures or new cancer diagnoses for the four most common cancers in the VA health system: prostate, lung, colorectal, and bladder cancers. Monthly procedures and new diagnoses were calculated, and the pre-COVID era (January 2018 to February 2020) was compared with the COVID era (March 2020 to February 2022).
resultsThe study identified 2.5 million patients who underwent a diagnostic or screening procedure related to the four cancers. A new cancer was diagnosed for 317,833 patients. During the first 2 years of the pandemic, VA medical centers performed 13,022 fewer prostate biopsies, 32,348 fewer cystoscopies, and 200,710 fewer colonoscopies than in 2018-2019. These persistent deficits added a cumulative deficit of nearly 19,000 undiagnosed prostate cancers and 3300 to 3700 undiagnosed cancers each for lung, colon, and bladder. Decreased diagnostic and screening procedures correlated with decreased new diagnoses of cancer, particularly cancer of the prostate (R = 0.44) and bladder (R = 0.27).
conclusionDisruptions in new diagnoses of four common cancers (prostate, lung, bladder, and colorectal) seen early in the COVID-19 pandemic have persisted for 2 years. Although reductions improved from the early pandemic, new reductions during the Delta and Omicron waves demonstrate the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer care.
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