The Impact of the SARS-COV-2 Pandemic on the Diagnosis of Lung Cancer Patients

The SARS-COV-2 pandemic had an important impact on the diagnosis of all pathologies, including lung cancer. According to Global Cancer Observatory 2020, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death (18%).

The study aims are the comparative evaluation of lung cancer diagnosis and optimal identification of the factors that influenced the establishment of this diagnosis in the pre-pandemic and SARS-COV-2 pandemic periods. This retrospective study included patients >18 years-old, diagnosed with lung carcinoma on surgical specimens in „Marius Nasta” Institute of Pneumophtisiology, grouped in two cohorts: pre-pandemic (March 01, 2019 - February 29, 2020, N=370) and pandemic (March 01, 2020 - February 28, 2021, N=177).

Demographic, clinical, and paraclinical information have been collected from the Institute's database, and statistically analyzed (IBM SPSS Statistics 21). The number of newly diagnosed bronchopulmonary carcinoma decrease almost by half during the first year of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic. We noticed a significant increase in the number of patients with professional exposure (p=0.040), atypical resections (p≤0.001), and tumors that couldn't be completely resected (p=0.001), and an ascending trend of lung carcinoma diagnosis in women smokers, even though it wasn't statistically significant (p=0.098). The proportion of newly diagnosed women from rural medium significantly decreased, from 36.45% to 17.65% (p=0.023). The SARS-COV-2 pandemic debut determined a significant under-diagnosis of lung cancer, with an increase in advanced tumors at the time of diagnosis. It is important to further analyze the situation in our country, given the fact that the literature review reported different results, depending on the geographic area.