Breast cancer diagnoses dropped 15.7% for women and 21.8% for men during the pandemic, according to a study involving nearly 1.5 million patients.
The decrease was consistent across every region in the U.S., age groups and races, according to Katharine Yao, MD, chair of the American College of Surgeons' accreditation program for breast centers and lead author of the research, which was published Jan. 13 in Cancer Medicine.
Dr. Yao and other researchers analyzed the incidence of breast cancer cases in 1.5 million patients at facilities that were accredited by the at Commission on Cancer between 2019 and 2020.
Hispanic women were the demographic that had the largest drop in diagnoses, which fell 18.4% between 2019 and 2020, though is still consistent with other health outcomes this group experienced during COVID-19, according to the researchers.
"There are so many unknowns. For example, in the next 5 to 10 years, are we going to see worse survival rates or higher recurrence rates because patients weren’t getting their screening mammograms or coming in to be evaluated?" Dr. Yao, said in a news release. “We just don’t know.”
The study is reported to be one of the first large-scale efforts to look at breast cancer rates early during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a March 14 news release from the American College of Surgeons shared with Becker's.
Editor's note: This article was updated March 18 at 10:48 a.m. CT.