The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening and prostate biopsy procedures. We sought to determine whether delayed screening and diagnostic workup of prostate cancer (PCa) was associated with increased subsequent rates of incident PCa and advanced PCa and whether the rates differed by race. We analyzed data from the Veterans Health Administration to assess the changes in the rates of PSA screening, prostate biopsy procedure, incident PCa, PCa with high-grade Gleason score, and incident metastatic prostate cancer (mPCa) before and after January 2020. While the late pandemic mPCa rate among White Veterans was comparable to the pre-pandemic rate (5.4 pre-pandemic vs 5.2 late-pandemic, p = 0.67), we observed a significant increase in incident mPCa cases among Black Veterans in the late pandemic period (8.1 pre-pandemic vs 11.3 late-pandemic, p < 0.001). Further investigation is warranted to fully understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer.
Cancer medicine. 2022 Aug 19 [Epub ahead of print]
Kyung Min Lee, Alex K Bryant, Patrick Alba, Tori Anglin, Brian Robison, Brent S Rose, Julie A Lynch
VA Informatics and Computing Infrastructure, VA Salt Lake City Health Care System, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA., Department of Radiation Oncology, Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA., VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, California, USA.