Impact of COVID-19 On Breast Cancer Management: A Radiological Prespective from A Tertiary Centre

The coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused delaying breast cancer management, increasing time interval in chemotherapy cycles and surgery. This has implications on radiological manifestation of cancer. Further, we evaluated changes observed in mammography.

This case control study was conducted from March 25^th, 2020 to August 15^th, 2020 at the Integrated Breast Care Centre, All India Institute of Medical Science Rishikesh (AIIMS), Rishikesh. Sonomammography was performed on follow-up patients who were on chemotherapy and were scheduled for surgery. Moreover, duration of delay from the last neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) cycle was recorded. Similar data in the pre-COVID-19 period from November 4^th, 2019 to March 24^th, 2020 was compared with post-COVID-19 data and was analyzed by SPSS Version 23.

The study included 54 patients who presented between March 25^th, 2020 and August 15^th, 2020. Furthermore, the delay in NACT cycles has been shown to be associated with disease progression (p = 0.045). Subgroup analysis of treatment duration with various parameters revealed significant correlation between size, appearance of ulceration, and response evaluation (p<0.05). However, no significant association was found between duration of delay and the histological subtype of lesion (p>0.05). A substantial difference was seen in the evaluation of NACT response in pre- and post-COVID-19 time, with partial response (n = 39, 58.24%) seen as the most common response in pre-COVID-19 time and progressive disease (n = 28, 51.9%) as the most common response in post-COVID-19 time (p<0.001).

The coronavirus pandemic has severe impact on breast cancer management. A delay in NACT causes progression in cancer. This can be seen in ultrasound and mammogram.