Surgical operations for colorectal cancer dropped in the first year of the pandemic as screening and diagnosis declined due to COVID-19 restrictions and people’s fear of contracting the illness, according to a recent study.
The peer-reviewed study, published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons on March 25, investigated how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted surgical interventions for colorectal cancer (CRC) in the United States. Researchers looked at data from the National Cancer Database (NCDB), analyzing adult patients who underwent surgical procedures for colon and rectal cancers in 2019 (pre-COVID) and 2020 (COVID). They found a 17.3 percent reduction in surgical operations among the over 105,000 patients in the initial year of the pandemic.
