Diagnosis and treatment delay of head and neck cancers during COVID-19 era in a tertiary care academic hospital: what should we expect?

De Luca, Pietro; Bisogno, Antonella; Colacurcio, Vito; Marra, Pasquale; Cassandro, Claudia; Camaioni, Angelo; Cassandro, Ettore; Scarpa, Alfonso

BACKGROUND: Since the spreading of SARS-CoV-2 from China, all deferrable medical activities have been suspended, to redirect resources for the management of COVID patients. The goal of this retrospective study was to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on head and neck cancers’ diagnosis in our Academic Hospital. METHODS: A retrospective analysis of patients treated for head and neck cancers between March 12 and November 1, 2020 was carried out, and we compared these data with the diagnoses of the same periods of the 5 previous years. RESULTS: 47 patients were included in this study. We observed a significative reduction in comparison with the same period of the previous 5 years. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with a decrease in the number of new H&N cancers diagnoses, and a substantial diagnostic delay can be attributable to COVID-19 control measures.