In the corona year 2020, six percent fewer new cancer diagnoses were made compared to 2019. That amounts to an estimated 4,000 missing diagnoses in Belgium. The Foundation against Cancer points out on Friday that the catch-up movement has been started, especially for certain tumors and age groups.
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The accelerated delivery of data from the laboratories for pathological anatomy allowed the Cancer Registry Foundation to map the impact of Covid-19 on the number of new cancer diagnoses.
During the first wave of the pandemic, there was a marked decline in the number of new cancer diagnoses from March 2020. The sharpest drop was recorded in mid-April 2020, after which the number of diagnoses started to increase again to reach expected normal values by early June 2020. The second wave in the autumn had little impact on the number of cancer diagnoses except for the over 80s .
An estimated ten percent fewer cancer diagnoses were recorded among the over-80s in 2020 compared to 2019. In children and adolescents (0-19 years), the observed decrease is four percent. Because cancers are rather rare there, it is estimated that there will be fewer than twenty patients in 2020. “Since the beginning of 2021, the catch-up effect in the number of diagnoses has almost been completed for the age groups under 50. An effort is still needed for the older age categories”, according to the Foundation.
The largest lasting decline was seen in head and neck cancers, with 14 percent fewer diagnoses in 2020 than the previous year. Those tumors showed only limited further recovery at the beginning of 2021, a decrease of ten percent. For melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer, the largest initial decline was observed in April 2020, but that decline narrowed to eight percent (melanoma) and nine percent (non-melanoma) of missing diagnoses by the end of 2020, with continued recovery momentum in early 2021.
For cancers of the bone marrow or lymph nodes, the decline will remain on average six percent for late 2020 and early 2021. Nearly all expected diagnoses have now been made for lung cancer (two percent remaining) and pancreatic cancer (four percent remaining at the end of 2020 and slight increase at the beginning of 2021), two cancers with a poorer prognosis.
The Foundation against Cancer emphasizes the importance of a diagnosis as early as possible, since the risks of more severe treatment and a poorer prognosis are greater with late diagnoses.
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