A new study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) said the COVID-19 pandemic is suspected to have caused a negative impact on cancer care and outcomes in Canada.
The study was carried out on cancer patients in Alberta in 2020 and compared outcomes with cancer patients who received their diagnoses in 2018 and 2019.
The study, published Monday, was authored by Emily Heer, Yibing Ruan, Devon J. Boyne, Tamer N. Jarada, Daniel Heng, Jan-Willem Henning, Donald M. Morris, Dylan E. O’Sullivan, Winson Y. Cheung and Darren R. Brenner; physicians and scientists associated with the departments of medicine, oncology and community health sciences at the University of Calgary.
The authors followed diagnoses of the 10 most prevalent cancer types in 2020 and then followed patients’ progress through to the end of 2021.
The study said there was a significant decline in diagnoses of breast cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer and melanoma during the 2020 COVID-19 emergency period, when compared to the period previous to 2020.
"These decreases largely occurred among early-stage rather than late-stage diagnoses. Patients who received a diagnosis of colorectal cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and uterine cancer in 2020 had lower one-year survival than those diagnosed in 2018. No other cancer sites had lower survival," said the study.
The authors interpreted the results as meaning many hospitals directed greater attention to COVID-19 care than to other types of health care.
"The COVID-19 pandemic started in Canada in January 2020, followed shortly by various interventions to reduce strain on the health-care system," said the study, which quoted a study from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
"These protections varied by province and territory, but generally involved minimizing in-person care for health-care services not related to COVID-19 and equipping non-emergency hospital units for pandemic response. It is possible that these protocols had far-reaching effects on the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of diseases other than COVID-19, such as cancer, but the extent of these consequences is not yet clear," the study continued.
The authors also wrote the health-care disruptions for cancer patients were considerable at health-care facilities in Alberta.
"Given that the largest impact was observed among early-stage cancers and those with organized screening programs, additional system capacity may be needed to mitigate future impact," said the study.
It was around the halfway point of the pandemic that the Ontario Medical Association spoke out saying there was a huge backlog of health-care services and procedures that had not been done because so much attention was directed at treating COVID-19.
This included news that more than 400,000 fewer breast cancer screenings had occurred in the previous two and a half years.
Also, it was just last week that Sudbury's Health Sciences North (HSN) revealed it was launching a series of information videos aimed at encouraging more people to step forward to take part in cancer screening, and this would include a more welcoming approach for transgender and non-binary individuals.
The CMAJ study concluded that cancer care will need to be adjusted to operate at a higher capacity.
"In this study, we observed a significant decrease in breast, colorectal and prostate cancers, and melanoma, with shifts toward higher stages at diagnosis, and suggestions of reduced 1-year survival of patients with colorectal cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and uterine cancer. In the coming years, cancer care will likely need to adjust and operate at higher capacity to reduce any far-reaching impact on cancer outcomes," the authors wrote.
The full text of the CMAJ study can be found online, here.
Len Gillis covers health care issues as well as the mining industry for Sudbury.com.
