Pandemic-related cuts in cancer screening worrying
Doctors concerned more people are at risk of tumours, death
Thousands of Canadians failed to undergo proactive cancer screening or diagnosis of possible cancers last year because of the pandemic, leading some doctors and advocates to fear a future surge in advanced tumours and deaths.
Data obtained by the National Post from two provinces and a report issued by a third show that proactive screening of patients without symptoms, and diagnosis of those suspected of having cancer plummeted in the first months of the coronavirus crisis.
Prostate cancer saw a particularly dramatic change, with 60 per cent fewer biopsies performed in Ontario between last March and August.
The Quebec Health Ministry estimates that over 4,000 people who normally would have been diagnosed with a malignancy during the first COVID-19 wave went undiagnosed.
Experts blame both restrictions imposed by the healthcare system itself, and patients afraid to visit doctors or the hospital when problems arise.
The number of tests has climbed back to normal levels recently, but there were still hundreds of thousands fewer mammograms, pap smears and colorectal cancer screens conducted on Canadians in 2020 than the year before.
That happened on top of a delay in hundreds of thousands of elective operations, which one prominent surgeon says has almost certainly allowed some cancers to get worse.
“I do believe that patients with cancer in Canada ... are being rendered fatal, terminal or incurable, as a result of what's happened,” said Dr. Neil Fleshner, chair of urology at the University of Toronto. “It has absolutely had an impact. I've seen it with my own eyes. It's extremely stressful.”
While the missed screening may have less short-term impact than delayed surgeries, he said he seems to be encountering more patients with advanced, harder-totreat disease.
Amid talk of triaging COVID-19 patients to assess who gets priority for limited critical-care resources, Fleshner said triaging of a sort has already occurred in the health care system. Cancer and other non-coronavirus patients have borne the brunt of that prioritizing, the physician said, though he said he supports the efforts to tackle the pandemic.