John Abraham’s colonoscopy was postponed for several months due to the pandemic. When he finally found it, doctors found it too big to safely remove during the space test. He had to wait several weeks for surgery, then several more to learn that he had not yet turned cancerous.
“I wonder if I had been screened when I should have been, if this had been different” and surgery could have been avoided, said Abraham, a mortgage banker in Peoria, Illinois.
Millions of colonoscopies, mammograms, lung scans, Pap tests and other cancer screenings were postponed for several months in the spring in the United States and elsewhere as COVID-19 put swamped medical care.
Researchers are now studying the effect, looking at how many cancers have been lost and whether tumors detected since then are more advanced.
Already, there are suggestions of a problem. University of Cincinnati researchers found that when CT scans began to test for recurrent lung cancer in June, 29% of patients had suspected nodules versus 8% in previous years.
Multiple studies suggest that fewer cancers were diagnosed last year, possibly as a result of less screening. Recently about 75 cancer groups urged a return to prepandemic screening levels as soon as possible.
But tumors take years to develop, and some reports suggest that a delay of a few months in screening for certain types of cancer may not have been as severe as feared. For example, researchers in the Netherlands found that a loss in that country’s mammography program did not go away until more cancers were detected at a late stage after screening resumed.
The pandemic was also breeding some creative solutions, such as the wider use of home-made experiments. In Philadelphia, a large church partnered with local doctors and used the flu-drive bullet program to pass stool tests for colon cancer screening.
“We are not afraid to try anything as it relates to health and wellbeing,” said the Rev. Leroy Miles from Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church. “The women encouraged men to get the screening, saying, ‘I got my mammogram. ‘And I say,’ ma’am, you have a colon too. ‘ ”
MERITS SCREENING
Screening tests vary in their risks and benefits, and health experts have long debated who should get which ones and how often. The pandemic breaststroke may be a “natural test” to see the value in the present day compared to what is known from long-term studies.
No difference in deaths may be seen for years, and early detection is only one reason for survival. Treatment is also important and he was injured with pandemic delay as well.
Dr. Ned Sharpless, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, estimates that nearly 10,000 deaths could occur over the next decade due to delays in the detection and treatment of breast and breast cancers. coloin. Delaying care was “once sensible” because of the risks of COVID-19, but delaying it too long could “turn one public health emergency into many others, ”He wrote in the journal Science.
Based on recent breast cancer deaths in the United States, around 10% could be prevented if women had routine screening, ”but 20% could be reduced. 25% be prevented with appropriate treatment, said Dr. Otis Brawley, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.
“That’s not to say that screening isn’t important, but many people think that cancer screening saves more lives than it really does,” said Brawley.
Short-term delays may not hurt mortality much if screening begins abruptly, as it must, he said.
Some optimistic news at the recent American Society for Cancer Research conference came from Sabine Siesling of the Dutch Cancer Associated Group. That country offers mammograms to women ages 50 to 74 every two years but stopped in mid-March because of COVID-19. After resuming in late summer, the results showed “no shift” to more advanced tumors, she said.
Researchers from Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s Hospital examined their screening tests for lung, cervical, colon, prostate and breast cancer. Screening fell sharply from March through June but the proportion who detected cancer or cancer was higher than usual, suggesting those screened were at higher risk. When screening returned to normal from June to September, the number of possible “missing” cancers was lower than expected.
GETTING CREATING
When actress Chadwick Boseman, 43, died of colon cancer last summer, Miles feared for the 12,000 members of his Philadelphia church. Black people are more likely to die from the disease than other groups, and there was little chance of colonoscopies, which can detect and remove growths before they turn into cancer.
Miles, who has attracted more than 1,000 church members to other health events, told the University of Pennsylvania, “We know how to get people to come if you are willing and able to do something.”
Dr. Carmen Guerra had a federal contribution to increase screening in ethnically diverse communities and realized that home testing could help. Studies show that these tests, which look for blood in stool, help save lives. People put a sample of a tiny stool in a tube and post it to a laboratory or, in this case, use a drop box at the church. If blood is found, the next step is colonoscopy.
Doctors would put out kittens in the parking lot at a flu shot in October. Church members had to watch video about colon cancer beforehand and record to make sure they were eligible for screening.
To date, 154 packages have been returned. Stacy Hill was among the 13 who tested positive. The 48-year-old Philadelphia woman had just lost her job and health insurance. Her colonoscopy revealed two tumors that, like Abraham’s, were captured before they turned into cancer.
“It surprised me,” Hill said. “I’m a proactive person so I was happy to find out. ”
The doctors also helped her enroll in Medicaid, “so now I have medical insurance” and can continue to get cancer screening, she said.
The church hopes to offer the home tests again at blood pressure events and diabetes screening in the spring.
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The Department of Health and Science Associated Press is supported by the Science Education Department of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.