Mammogram delays could mean 700 extra breast cancer deaths
After pandemic saw routine screening scrapped...
‘Utterly devastating’
NEARLY 700 more women in England could die from breast cancer as a result of the pandemic, a study shows.
Delays to screening caused by lockdown restrictions mean hundreds more are likely to lose their lives.
researchers warned many cancers that would have been picked up during routine checks will have progressed while women were made to wait. and further hold-ups due to clearing the screening backlog will add to the problem.
nearly 1.5 million women in the UK had routine mammograms delayed by up to seven months between July 2020 and July 2021.
researchers from the Department of Health and Social Care, the UK Health Security agency and Queen Mary University of London calculated this will mean thousands of extra cases of breast cancer that probably would have been detected during screening, instead only being diagnosed once women have developed symptoms and the tumour is more advanced. Leading cancer charities last night called for more details on how the Government plans to tackle staff shortages that are affecting services.
Baroness Morgan, chief executive of Breast Cancer now, said the findings were ‘utterly devastating’. She added: ‘this research highlights the tragic consequences of the disruption caused by Covid-19 for breast cancer.
‘it’s now a matter of life and death that the government addresses this backlog as an immediate priority. it needs to urgently boost the cancer workforce.’
Dr Jodie Moffat, head of early diagnosis at Cancer research UK, said: ‘Breast screening services are back up and running, which is great.
‘But getting through the backlog is challenging because of a lack of NHS capacity.
‘We need clarity about how the extra money promised to the NHS is going to be used to tackle these chronic workforce shortages.’
Last September, the Government pledged an extra £5.4billion over six months to help the NHS cope with pandemic backlogs.
More than two million women in the UK undergo annual breast cancer screening and the checks are credited with saving 1,300 lives each year. But within months of the pandemic beginning in March 2020, the NHS was forced to put most routine breast X-rays on hold. the latest study, published online in the British Journal of Cancer, is one of the first to calculate precisely what impact the delays are likely to have on the breast cancer death toll.
researchers looked at the number of women affected by screening suspension and for how long and estimated the proportion of cancers that would have been missed due to checks being put off. they estimated 2,783 cancers in England would shift from screen-detected to symptomatic disease, as a result of the programme disruption.
an optimistic scenario, they said, where the backlog is cleared quickly, could mean just 148 additional breast cancer deaths. a more pessimistic outlook puts the extra death toll at 687.
researchers warned: ‘it’s likely the true numbers are closer to the upper end of the range. there will be delays in diagnosis which may have a substantial negative impact on women’s breast cancer survival for the next ten years.’