Alterations in Cancer Treatment During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the US

The COVID-19 pandemic created challenges to the evaluation and treatment of cancer, and abrupt resource diversion toward patients with COVID-19 put cancer treatment on hold for many patients. Previous reports have shown substantial declines in cancer screening and diagnoses in 2020; however, the extent to which the delivery of cancer care was altered remains unclear.

To assess alterations in cancer treatment in the US during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This retrospective cohort study used data from the National Cancer Database (NCDB) on patients older than 18 years with newly diagnosed cancer from January 1, 2018, to December 31, 2020.

The main outcomes were accessibility (time to treatment, travel distance, and multi-institutional care), availability (proportional changes in cancer treatment between years), and utilization (reductions by treatment modality, hospital type) of cancer treatment in 2020 compared with 2018 to 2019. Autoregressive models forecasted expected findings for 2020 based on observations from prior years.

Of 1 229 654 patients identified in the NCDB in 2020, 1 074 225 were treated for cancer, representing a 16.8% reduction from what was expected. Patients were predominately female (53.8%), with a median age of 66 years (IQR, 57-74 years), similar to demographics in 2018 and 2019. Median time between diagnosis and treatment was 26 days (IQR, 0-36 days) in 2020, and median travel distance for care was 11.1 miles (IQR, 5.0-25.3 miles), similar to 2018 and 2019. In 2020, fewer patients traveled longer distances (20.2% reduction of patients traveling >35 miles). The proportions of patients treated with chemotherapy (32.0%), radiation (29.5%), and surgery (57.1%) were similar to those in 2018 and 2019. Overall, 146 805 fewer patients than expected underwent surgery, 80 480 fewer received radiation, and 68 014 fewer received chemotherapy. Academic hospitals experienced the greatest reduction in cancer surgery and treatment, with a decrease of approximately 484 patients (-19.0%) per hospital compared with 99 patients (-12.6%) at community hospitals and 110 patients (-12.8%) at integrated networks.

This study found that among patients diagnosed with cancer in 2020, access and availability of treatment remained intact; however, reductions in treated patients varied across treatment modalities and were greater at academic hospitals than at community hospitals and integrated networks compared with expected values. These results suggest the resilience of cancer service lines and frame the economic losses from reductions in cancer treatment during the pandemic.