DFCI Faculty Relay Insight Into Confirmed Rebounds of Cancer Screenings After COVID-19

Welcome to OncLive On Air^®! I’m your host today, Gina Mauro.

OncLive On Air^® is a podcast from OncLive^®, which provides oncology professionals with the resources and information they need to provide the best patient care. In both digital and print formats, OncLive^® covers every angle of oncology practice, from new technology to treatment advances to important regulatory decisions.

Today, we had the pleasure of speaking with Chris Labaki, MD, an oncology research fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Quoc-Dien Trinh, MD, an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, and in the Division of Urology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, to discuss research they recently had published in Cancer Cell, which focuses on the substantial increase in cancer screening procedures documented in more recent time periods following the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When compared with pre-pandemic time periods, investigators noted an increase in all of the following screening procedures, specifically mammography, prostate-specific antigen, Pap smear, and low-dose CT. Colonoscopy was the only procedure that did not see an uptick vs pre-pandemic time points.

Furthermore, the research noted that racial disparities appeared to differ between screening procedures, and they are more marked in patients undergoing mammography.

In our exclusive interview, Drs Labaki and Trinh discussed their research on the recovery of cancer screening tests and its link with potential racial disparities from the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the community can continue to emphasize the importance of cancer screening while working to close the gaps of disparities in cancer care.