Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Diagnosis of Gastrointestinal Cancer

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a major impact every aspect of life all over the world with severe consequences. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the number of gastrointestinal endoscopy procedures and resulting cancer detection rate at our center. This was a retrospective and single-center study. The 6-month period from March 11 to September 11, 2020 (lockdown period) was compared with the same months of 2018 and 2019 (pre-pandemic period) in terms of the number of endoscopic procedures performed at our gastroenterology unit, malignancy detection rate and clinicopathological characteristics of patients. The data were analyzed using the SPSS Statistics 22.0 software package. A 33% reduction was observed in the number of endoscopic procedures during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic years and the difference was significant (p<0.001). Despite the decrease in endoscopic activity, cancer detection increased during the pandemic (p=0.057). Male sex and age 65 years or older were non-significantly more common among patients diagnosed with cancer on endoscopic biopsy during the pandemic compared to the pre-pandemic era but the difference was non-significant (p=0.983, p=0.241). Patients diagnosed with cancer during the pandemic were more likely to present at an advanced stage. The most common cancers were those originating from the colon and rectum and adenocarcinoma was the most prevalent pathological diagnosis. The distributions of tumor location and pathological diagnosis of the patients were not significantly different among the years (p=0,494, p=0,849). In conclusion, a reduction was found in the overall number of endoscopic procedures during the lockdown. However, despite the decrease in the number of procedures, cancer detection rate and the rate of admission at advanced stages were increased at a non-significant level. © 2022 Ondokuz Mayis Universitesi. All rights reserved.