Diagnosis and treatment delay of head and neck cancers during COVID-19 era in a tertiary care academic hospital: what should we expect?

Pietro De Luca; Antonella Bisogno; Vito Colacurcio; Pasquale Marra; Claudia Cassandro; Angelo Camaioni; Ettore Cassandro; Alfonso Scarpa

doi:10.1007/s00405-021-06834-1

Diagnosis and treatment delay of head and neck cancers during COVID-19 era in a tertiary care academic hospital: what should we expect?

Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2022 Feb;279(2):961-965. doi: 10.1007/s00405-021-06834-1. Epub 2021 Apr 30.

Authors

Pietro De Luca¹, Antonella Bisogno², Vito Colacurcio², Pasquale Marra², Claudia Cassandro³, Angelo Camaioni⁴, Ettore Cassandro², Alfonso Scarpa²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medicine, Surgery and Dentistry, University of Salerno, Salerno, Italy. dr.dlp@hotmail.it.
² Department of Medicine, Surgery and Dentistry, University of Salerno, Salerno, Italy.
³ Department of Surgical Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy.
⁴ Otolaryngology Department, San Giovanni-Addolorata Hospital, Rome, Italy.

Abstract

Background: Since the spreading of SARS-CoV-2 from China, all deferrable medical activities have been suspended, to redirect resources for the management of COVID patients. The goal of this retrospective study was to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on head and neck cancers' diagnosis in our Academic Hospital.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of patients treated for head and neck cancers between March 12 and November 1, 2020 was carried out, and we compared these data with the diagnoses of the same periods of the 5 previous years.

Results: 47 patients were included in this study. We observed a significative reduction in comparison with the same period of the previous 5 years.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with a decrease in the number of new H&N cancers diagnoses, and a substantial diagnostic delay can be attributable to COVID-19 control measures.

Keywords: COVID-19; Diagnosis delay; Head and neck cancer; Lockdown; Oncology.

MeSH terms

COVID-19*
Delayed Diagnosis
Head and Neck Neoplasms* / diagnosis
Head and Neck Neoplasms* / epidemiology
Head and Neck Neoplasms* / therapy
Hospitals
Humans
Pandemics
Retrospective Studies
SARS-CoV-2
Tertiary Healthcare
Time-to-Treatment