Cancer survival fell during 1st years of pandemic: Study 

Cancer-related mortality within one year of diagnosis rose 13.1% during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study published Feb. 5 in JAMA Oncology. 

Researchers from Lexington-based University of Kentucky and Charleston-based Medical University of South Carolina analyzed survival trends from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results 21 Registries database for patients who were diagnosed with cancer between Jan. 1, 2015, and Dec. 31, 2021.

Here are five notes from the study:

1. More than 1 million individuals were diagnosed with cancer during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic: 473,781 in 2020 and 534,231 in 2021.
   
   
2. Compared with data from 2015 to 2019, survival rates for early-stage diagnoses declined 0.44 percentage points in 2020 and 0.27 percentage points in 2021.
   
   Survival rates for late-stage diagnoses fell 1.34 percentage points in 2020 and 1.2 percentage points in 2021.
   
   
3. Reduced survival during 2020 and 2021 results in an estimated 17,390 additional cancer-related deaths within one year of diagnosis, representing a 13.1% increase.
   
   
4. Survival rates fell by 3.98 and 3.67 percentage points among patients diagnosed with early-stage esophageal cancer, and by 1.08 and 0.78 among patients diagnosed with early-stage colorectal cancer in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
   
   Survival rates for late-stage prostate cancer diagnoses declined by 0.64 in 2020 and 0.77 in 2021.
   

5. The findings suggest “substantial harms associated with cancer care disruptions during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the study authors wrote. 

Read the full study here.