Research shows that up to 20,000 prostate cancer diagnoses could have been missed during the pandemic

Research shows that up to 20,000 prostate cancer diagnoses could have been missed during the pandemic.

Analysis of 24 million patient records since 2020 shows that tens of thousands of men have missed potentially life-saving cancer diagnoses.

The research from the University of Surrey and the University of Oxford shows that there has been an ‘unprecedented disruption’ in cancer diagnosis, with a fall in the number of urgent referrals from GPs, caused by difficulties in accessing care and longer waiting times.

They analyzed the incidence of prostate cancer between January 2015 and July 2023 using data representing 40 percent of the country. It showed that the number of prostate cancer diagnoses fell by 31 percent in 2020 and by 18 percent in 2021, after which the number of prostate cancer diagnoses returned to normal in 2022.

Extrapolated to the whole country there were 19,800 fewer cases, according to the findings published in the British Journal of Urology International.

Lead author Dr Agnieszka Lemanska, from the University of Surrey, said: ‘Understandably, during the pandemic, resources and attention in healthcare systems have shifted towards preventing and controlling the virus.

‘It is important that we learn lessons from the pandemic. However, to do this we need to understand the scale at which diagnosis rates have been affected over this period.”