Breast Cancer Management During the COVID Pandemic

Abstract

Objective: To explore the impact of COVID-19 among both the newly diagnosed patients and patients under follow-up for breast cancer by focusing on patients' accessibility to management and comparing the distribution of them before and during pandemic. Study Design: Single -centric retrospective study. Place and Duration of the Study: Department of General Surgery and Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Atilim University, Medicana International Ankara Hospital, Ankara, Turkiye, from March 2018 to 2022. Methodology: The data were collected to analyse numbers and distributions of physician visits regarding breast cancer. Results: The mean age of patients was 55.98 +/- 12.60 years. The percentages of newly diagnosed cases showed similarity (7.37% vs. 9.79%) before and during the pandemic (p = 0.18). The number of imaging studies decreased by 53.33% in patients under follow-up (p = 0.006), despite screening tests showed a similar trend (p = 0.145). General surgery visits marked up (+44.6%), in contrast to plastic surgery visits (-42.04%, p <0.001). Patients' admissions decreased in many COVID-19 related clinics (pulmonology, emergency, internal medicine, and intensive care), but cardiology (+96.59%) and rehabilitation (+75%) admissions increased during the pandemic (p <0.001). The number of medical oncology and radiation oncology visits did not change (p >0.05). Conclusion: Total number of physician visits was similar before and during the pandemic despite the changing distribution. While COVID-19 led to markedly rising trends of surgical, cardiological, and rehabilitative management in patients with breast cancer, falling trends were seen in other specialities except oncology which showed a plateau during two years. The falling trends of visits to pulmonology, emergency, internal medicine, and intensive care clinics may be explained by crowded COVID-19 cases.