‘The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer deaths due to delays in diagnosis in England, UK: a national, population-based, modelling study’ Brief Review
Similar to Informative and Emotional Needs of Cancer Patients during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Proposal for a Concomitant Psychological Support during Inpatient Chemotherapy Delivery, this article was able to take advantage of an abnormal occurrence (COVID-19) to gain otherwise unobtainable data, making its findings extremely insightful. Furthermore, the decision to distinguish between levels of severity of breakup in cancer care/treatment allows for even deeper analysis, being that data sets are gathered with greater specificity in mind.
The data seems to display a statistically significant increase in mortality rate once cancer treatment and diagnosis are interrupted in any form. While the study is fairly large in scale, analyzing large swaths of data impacted by a global event, I believe the results can also be applied individually, warning of the consequences of delays, even if for a less worldwide issue than COVID-19. Delays due to processing, issues improper health education, or uncoordinated work schedules should be recognized as possibly causing similar effects on patients, all else held constant.
The article’s discussion seems most concerned with solving the problems caused by the ‘Stay at Home’ proclamations that defined the period of COVID-19. While a reasonable goal, I would hope that such an omnipresent occurrence also serves as a warning for the consequences of large-scale delays for any reason.
I will likely take a look at a few of this article’s references in the future. Diagnostic intervals and its association with breast, prostate, lung, and colorectal cancer survival in England: historical cohort study using the Clinical Practice Research Datalink, Cancer Survival in England, and Evidence of advanced stage colorectal cancer with longer diagnostic intervals: a pooled analysis of seven primary care cohorts comprising 11720 patients in five countries will all be worth analyzing, amongst a few others.
