Collateral damage: the impact on outcomes from cancer surgery of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cancer diagnostics and surgery have been disrupted by the response of healthcare services to the COVID-19 pandemic. Progression of cancers during delay will impact on patient long-term survival.

We generated per-day hazard ratios of cancer progression from observational studies and applied these to age-specific, stage-specific cancer survival for England 2013-2017. We modelled per-patient delay of three months and six months and periods of disruption of one year and two years. Using healthcare resource costing, we contextualise attributable lives saved and life-years gained from cancer surgery to equivalent volumes of COVID-19 hospitalisations.

Per year, 94,912 resections for major cancers result in 80,406 long-term survivors and 1,717,051 life years gained. Per-patient delay of three/six months would cause attributable death of 4,755/10,760 of these individuals with loss of 92,214/208,275 life-years. For cancer surgery, average life-years gained (LYGs) per patient are 18.1 under standard conditions and 17.1/15.9 with a delay of three/six months (an average loss of 0.97/2.19 LYG per patient). Taking into account units of healthcare resource (HCRU), surgery results on average per patient in 2.25 resource-adjusted life-years gained (RALYGs) under standard conditions and 2.12/1.97 RALYGs following delay of three/six months. For 94,912 hospital COVID-19 admissions, there are 482,022 LYGs requiring of 1,052,949 HCRUs. Hospitalisation of community-acquired COVID-19 patients yields on average per patient 5.08 LYG and 0.46 RALYGs.

Modest delays in surgery for cancer incur significant impact on survival. Delay of three/six months in surgery for incident cancers would mitigate 19%/43% of life-years gained by hospitalisation of an equivalent volume of admissions for community-acquired COVID-19. This rises to 26%/59% when considering resource-adjusted life-years gained. To avoid a downstream public health crisis of avoidable cancer deaths, cancer diagnostic and surgical pathways must be maintained at normal throughput, with rapid attention to any backlog already accrued.

Annals of oncology : official journal of the European Society for Medical Oncology. 2020 May 16 [Epub ahead of print]

Amit Sud, Michael Jones, John Broggio, Chey Loveday, Bethany Torr, Alice Garrett, David L Nicol, Shaman Jhanji, Stephen A Boyce, Firza Gronthoud, Phillip Ward, Jonathan M Handy, Nadia Yousaf, James Larkin, Yae-Eun Suh, Stephen Scott, Paul D P Pharoah, Charles Swanton, Christopher Abbosh, Matthew Williams, Georgios Lyratzopoulos, Richard Houlston, Clare Turnbull

Division of Genetics and Epidemiology, Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK., National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service, Public Health England, Wellington House, London, UK., Urology Unit, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK., Department of Anaesthesia, Perioperative Medicine and Critical Care, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK; Division of Cancer Biology, Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK., Department of Colorectal Surgery, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, UK., Department of Microbiology, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK., Department of Anaesthesia, Perioperative Medicine and Critical Care, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK., Lung Cancer Unit, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK., Skin and Renal Unit, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK; Division of Clinical Studies, Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK., Department of Clinical Oncology, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK., RM Partners, West London Cancer Alliance, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK., Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK., Cancer Evolution and Genome Instability Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, London, UK; Cancer Evolution and Genome Instability Laboratory, University College London Cancer Institute, London, UK., Department of Clinical Oncology, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London, UK; Computational Oncology Group, Imperial College London, London, UK., National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service, Public Health England, Wellington House, London, UK; Epidemiology of Cancer Healthcare and Outcomes (ECHO) Group, University College London, London, UK., Division of Genetics and Epidemiology, Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK; Department of Clinical Genetics, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK., Division of Genetics and Epidemiology, Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK; National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service, Public Health England, Wellington House, London, UK; Department of Clinical Genetics, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK. Electronic address: .