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

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  1 , Antonella Bisogno  2 , Vito Colacurcio  2 , Pasquale Marra  2 , Claudia Cassandro  3 , Angelo Camaioni  4 , Ettore Cassandro  2 , Alfonso Scarpa  2
Affiliations

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 et al. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2022 Feb.

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.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflict of interests to disclose.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Comparison between the number of diagnoses of head and neck cancers at our University Hospital in the last 5 years and in the pandemic period of COVID-19 (March 1, 2020—November 1, 2020)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Comparison between the number of diagnoses of each type of head and neck tumor provided in the last 5 years and in the pandemic period of COVID-19 (March 12, 2020—November 1, 2020)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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