A new paper in the
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that disruptions in health care due to the COVID 19 pandemic may increase breast cancer deaths.
In March 2020 public health measures prohibited most elective procedures, including mammography, due to hospital capacity and limited personal protective equipment. This reduced mammograms up to 80%. Breast cancer patients also experienced treatment delays and reductions in planned or expected chemotherapy treatments.
Researchers here used three independently-developed breast cancer simulation models from the National Cancer Institute s Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network to predict the effect of COVID-19-related interruptions on breast cancer mortality due to health care delivery disruptions in the first 6 months of the pandemic.