Tens of thousands of prostate cancer Cases were missed during the COVID pandemic disruption.
Those are the findings of a new study published in BJU International last month.
Researchers from the University of Oxford and other UK universities analyzed a dataset of 285,160 participants from OpenSAFELY-TPP, a large, nationally representative dataset of routine healthcare records.
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They focused on 165,410 men in the UK who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer between January 2015 and July 2023.
In 2020, prostate cancer diagnoses decreased 31% from the previous year.
A new study found that tens of thousands of prostate cancer cases were missed during the COVID pandemic disruption. (iStock)
The decrease was 18% in 2021.
By 2022, diagnosed cases had returned to expected levels.
“Given that our data set represents 40% of the population, we estimate that proportionally the pandemic caused 20,000 people to be lost. prostate cancer diagnoses only in England,” the researchers wrote in the study's discussion.
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During that time, the age at diagnosis became older.
“The increase in incidence recorded in 2023 was not enough to explain the missed cases,” the researchers also stated, meaning that diagnoses have not yet “caught up” to those that went unnoticed in 2020 and 2021.
Based on these findings, the researchers recommend that healthcare providers focus on finding affected men.
Prostate cancer diagnoses in 2020 decreased by 31% compared to the previous year, a new study revealed. (iStock)
“More research is needed to investigate the consequences of this on patients and health care systems,” they said.
Dr. Marc Siegel, clinical professor of medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center and Fox News medical contributor, noted that there is no universal prostate cancer screening program in the United Kingdom.
“That's because the feeling is that the PSA [prostate-specific antigen] may be inaccurate,” said Siegel, who was not involved in the new U.K. study.
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“I don't agree with that, because most of us here in the US (primary care doctors and urologists) follow the trends in PSA, knowing that it's not perfect, but we use it as a guide to know something what happens in the prostate.
The PSA is a blood test that measures the level of a specific protein produced by the prostate.
There is no universal prostate cancer screening program in the United Kingdom, said Dr. Marc Siegel of New York City. (iStock)
“In the UK, a massive study is currently underway into the effectiveness of different types of prostate cancer screening modalities, but in the US, many major medical centers, including mine, have already integrated the latest MRI tests to look at patients with high PSA or increasing trends before prostate biopsy,” Siegel told Fox News Digital.
“Delays in diagnoses in the UK are not surprising.”
“MRI also allows the biopsy to be directed to a particular area of abnormality when necessary.”
Regarding the effects of the pandemic, Siegel pointed out that the confinements caused a delay in routine medical attention in both the US and the UK
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“The delay in diagnoses in the UK is not surprising,” he added.
The study had some limitations, the researchers acknowledged.
Firstly, it focused solely on data from England, so it does not apply to global populations.
Based on the new findings, the researchers recommend that healthcare providers focus on finding affected men. (iStock)
It is also possible that some cases were missed, as diagnoses were drawn from primary care health records rather than cancer registries.
“However, in the United Kingdom, information about cancer diagnosis is sent to primary care in hospital discharge letters and primary care is a valid source of this data,” the researchers stated.
“We validated the results with other published studies and they align closely, confirming the validity of the methodology.”
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The study does not prove that COVID caused the drop in diagnoses, the researchers noted, as it is possible that there are “multiple explanatory factors that are not limited to COVID-19 pandemic“.
But the study did note that “during the COVID-19 pandemic, the resources and attention of global healthcare systems were directed toward the prevention and management of COVID-19. Access to healthcare services unrelated to COVID-19 changed, waiting times increased and cancer pathways, including treatment standards, adapted.
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It also said, in part, that “patient behavior seeking medical care changed as people adopted social distancing (limiting face-to-face contact) and shielding (shielding high-risk individuals) to protect themselves.” themselves and others from infection.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the study's authors for additional comment.
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