A rapid review on the COVID-19's global impact on breast cancer screening participation rates and volumes from January-December 2020

  1. Reagan Lee
  2. Wei Xu
  3. Marshall Dozier
  4. Ruth McQuillan
  5. Evropi Theodoratou
  6. Jonine Figueroa  Is a corresponding author
  7. on behalf of UNCOVER and the International Partnership for Resilience in Cancer Systems (I-PaRCS), Breast Cancer Working Group 2
  1. University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
  2. National Cancer Institute, United States

Abstract

COVID-19 has strained population breast mammography screening programs that aim to diagnose and treat breast cancers earlier. As the pandemic has affected countries differently, we aimed to quantify changes in breast screening volume and uptake during the first year of COVID-19 crisis. We systematically searched Medline, the WHO (World Health Organization) COVID-19 database, and governmental databases. Studies covering January 2020 to March 2022 were included. We extracted and analyzed data regarding study methodology, screening volume and uptake. To assess for risk-of-bias, we used the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal tool. Twenty-six cross-sectional descriptive studies (focusing on 13 countries) were included out of 935 independent records. Reductions in screening volume and uptake rates were observed among eight countries. Changes in screening participation volume in five countries with national population-based screening ranged from -13% to –31%. Among two countries with limited population-based programs the decline ranged from -61% to -41%. Within the USA, population participation volumes varied ranging from +18% to -39% with suggestion of differences by insurance status (HMO, Medicare, and low-income programs). Almost all studies had high risk-of-bias due to insufficient statistical analysis and confounding factors. Extent of COVID-19-induced reduction in breast screening participation volume differed by region and data suggested potential differences by healthcare setting (e.g., national health insurance vs private health care). Recovery efforts should monitor access to screening and early diagnosis to determine if prevention services need strengthening to increase coverage of disadvantaged groups and reduce disparities.

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Source data included as excel file

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Reagan Lee

    Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Wei Xu

    Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Marshall Dozier

    Information Services, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Ruth McQuillan

    Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0998-9540
  5. Evropi Theodoratou

    Centre for Global Health, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Jonine Figueroa

    Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, United States
    For correspondence
    jonine.figueroa@ed.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-5100-623X

Funding

National Cancer Institute (Jonine Figueroa research is supported by the intramural program)

  • Jonine Figueroa

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Rafael Meza, Univeristy of Michigan, United States

Version history

  1. Received: December 20, 2022
  2. Accepted: August 20, 2023
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: September 12, 2023 (version 1)

Copyright

This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.

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  1. Reagan Lee
  2. Wei Xu
  3. Marshall Dozier
  4. Ruth McQuillan
  5. Evropi Theodoratou
  6. Jonine Figueroa
  7. on behalf of UNCOVER and the International Partnership for Resilience in Cancer Systems (I-PaRCS), Breast Cancer Working Group 2
(2023)
A rapid review on the COVID-19's global impact on breast cancer screening participation rates and volumes from January-December 2020
eLife 12:e85680.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.85680

Further reading

    1. Epidemiology and Global Health
    Tina Bech Olesen, Henry Jensen ... Sisse H Njor
    Research Article Updated

    Background:

    In most of the world, the mammography screening programmes were paused at the start of the pandemic, whilst mammography screening continued in Denmark. We examined the mammography screening participation during the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark.

    Methods:

    The study population comprised all women aged 50–69 years old invited to participate in mammography screening from 2016 to 2021 in Denmark based on data from the Danish Quality Database for Mammography Screening in combination with population-based registries. Using a generalised linear model, we estimated prevalence ratios (PRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of mammography screening participation within 90, 180, and 365 d since invitation during the pandemic in comparison with the previous years adjusting for age, year and month of invitation.

    Results:

    The study comprised 1,828,791 invitations among 847,766 women. Before the pandemic, 80.2% of invitations resulted in participation in mammography screening within 90 d, 82.7% within 180 d, and 83.1% within 365 d. At the start of the pandemic, the participation in screening within 90 d was reduced to 69.9% for those invited in pre-lockdown and to 76.5% for those invited in first lockdown. Extending the length of follow-up time to 365 d only a minor overall reduction was observed (PR = 0.94; 95% CI: 0.93–0.95 in pre-lockdown and PR = 0.97; 95% CI: 0.96–0.97 in first lockdown). A lower participation was, however, seen among immigrants and among women with a low income.

    Conclusions:

    The short-term participation in mammography screening was reduced at the start of the pandemic, whilst only a minor reduction in the overall participation was observed with longer follow-up time, indicating that women postponed screening. Some groups of women, nonetheless, had a lower participation, indicating that the social inequity in screening participation was exacerbated during the pandemic.

    Funding:

    The study was funded by the Danish Cancer Society Scientific Committee (grant number R321-A17417) and the Danish regions.

    1. Epidemiology and Global Health
    2. Genetics and Genomics
    Arturo Torres Ortiz, Michelle Kendall ... Louis Grandjean
    Research Article

    Accurate inference of who infected whom in an infectious disease outbreak is critical for the delivery of effective infection prevention and control. The increased resolution of pathogen whole-genome sequencing has significantly improved our ability to infer transmission events. Despite this, transmission inference often remains limited by the lack of genomic variation between the source case and infected contacts. Although within-host genetic diversity is common among a wide variety of pathogens, conventional whole-genome sequencing phylogenetic approaches exclusively use consensus sequences, which consider only the most prevalent nucleotide at each position and therefore fail to capture low frequency variation within samples. We hypothesized that including within-sample variation in a phylogenetic model would help to identify who infected whom in instances in which this was previously impossible. Using whole-genome sequences from SARS-CoV-2 multi-institutional outbreaks as an example, we show how within-sample diversity is partially maintained among repeated serial samples from the same host, it can transmitted between those cases with known epidemiological links, and how this improves phylogenetic inference and our understanding of who infected whom. Our technique is applicable to other infectious diseases and has immediate clinical utility in infection prevention and control.