Cancer incidence trends in 2021 largely returned to what they were before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). However, there was little evidence of a rebound in incidence that would account for the decline in diagnoses in 2020, when screening and other medical care was disrupted. One exception was breast cancer, where the researchers did see an uptick in diagnoses of advanced-stage disease in 2021.
The study " Impact of COVID-19 on 2021 Cancer Incidence Rates and Potential Rebound from 2020 Decline ," appears September 24, 2024, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. . A previous study showed that new cancer diagnoses fell abruptly in early 2020, as did the volume of pathology reports, suggesting that many cancers were not being diagnosed in a timely manner.
To determine whether these missed diagnoses were caught in 2021, possibly as more advanced cancers , researchers from NIH's National Cancer Institute (NCI) compared observed cancer incidence rates for 2021 with those expected from pre-pandemic trends using data from NCI's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program . A full recovery in cancer incidence should appear as an increase over pre-pandemic levels (also known as a rebound) to account for the missed diagnoses. The researchers looked at cancer overall, as well as five major cancer types that vary in how they are typically detected: through screening (female breast and prostate cance.