In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Burus et al found that patients diagnosed with invasive cancer during 2020 and 2021—the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic—had poorer 1-year cause-specific survival (CSS) rates vs patients diagnosed in the prepandemic years of 2015 to 2019.
Study Details
The study involved data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results 21 Registries (SEER-21) database on patients diagnosed with invasive cancer between January 2015 and December 2021. The primary outcome measure was 1-year CSS rates by stage at diagnosis for patients diagnosed with cancer in 2020 and 2021 compared with trends in 1-year CSS rates among patients diagnosed between 2015 and 2019.
Key Findings
A total of 1,008,012 individuals were diagnosed with cancer during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic, including 473,781 in 2020 and 534,231 in 2021.
Compared with trends observed in prepandemic years, significant absolute reductions in 1-year CSS rates were observed among patients with early-stage diagnoses in 2020 (−0.44 percentage points, 95% confidence interval [CI] = −0.54 to −0.34 percentage points) and in 2021 (−0.27 percentage points, 95% CI = −0.37 to −0.16 percentage points) and among those with late-stage diagnoses in 2020 (−1.34 percentage points, 95% CI = −1.75 to −0.93 percentage points) and in 2021 (−1.20 percentage points, 95% CI = −1.69 to −0.71 percentage points). The reductions in survival were estimated to result in 17,390 more cancer-related deaths within 1 year of diagnosis than expected during the first 2 years of the pandemic.
Significant cancer site–specific survival reductions were observed in both 2020 and 2021 for early-stage diagnoses of esophageal cancer (−3.89 and −3.67 percentage points) and colorectal cancer (−1.08 and −0.78 percentage points) and late-stage diagnoses of prostate cancer (−0.64 and −0.77 percentage points).
The investigators concluded: “This cohort study found that individuals diagnosed with cancer in 2020 and 2021 experienced worse short-term survival than those diagnosed between 2015 and 2019, suggesting substantial harms associated with cancer care disruptions during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Todd Burus, PhD, of University of Kentucky, Lexington, is the corresponding author for the JAMA Oncology article.
DISCLOSURE: The study was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute. For full disclosures of the study authors, visit jamanetwork.com.
