Impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer registration and cancer care:
a European survey
The COVID-19 pandemic posed a number of challenges to the oncology community, particularly the diagnosis and care of cancer patients while ensuring safety from the virus for both patients and professionals: minimisation of visits to the hospital, cancellation of the screening programmes and the difficulties in the management and operation of cancer registries (CRs) while working remotely.
This paper describes the effects in the medium term of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer registration in Europe, focusing on changes in cancer detection and treatment, possible reduction of CR resources and difficulties in the access to data sources.
A questionnaire was distributed in June 2020 to the directors of 108 CRs affiliated to the European Network of Cancer Registries (ENCR) from 34 countries, providing a 37% response rate.
The results of the survey showed that cancer-screening programmes were mostly stopped or slowed down in the majority of regions covered by the respondent CRs. Cancer diagnostics and treatments were also severely disrupted. The cancer registration process was also disrupted, due to changes in the work modalities for the personnel or allocation of staff to different activities related to the controlling the pandemic, as well as to the difficulties in accessing sources and/or receiving the notifications. Some CRs reported that they were investigating the impact of COVID-19 on cancer care via dedicated studies. Some of these registries planned to process 2020 incidence data faster than usual, in order to depict the 2020 panorama as quickly as possible.
NEAMTIU Luciana;
MARTOS JIMENEZ Maria Del Carmen;
GIUSTI Francesco;
NEGRAO DE CARVALHO Raquel;
RANDI Giorgia;
DIMITROVA Nadya;
FLEGO Manuela;
DYBA Tadeusz Artur;
BETTIO Manola;
GAVIN Anna;
VISSER Otto;
2022-07-18
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
JRC124893
1101-1262 (online),
https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/32/2/311/6478278,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC124893,
10.1093/eurpub/ckab21 (online),
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