ABSTRACT
Background: The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a rapid reorganization of health care system in Italy. Therefore, CS slowed down during the two lockdown periods including for BC primary prevention such as mammography and breast ultrasound. Hence, the aim of our retrospective analysis was to evaluate the impact of the discontinuation of CS and subsequent delay in surgical treatment during COVID-19 on BC diagnosis. Patients and methods: All patients who underwent breast surgery after BC diagnosis from March 8, 2019 to March 8, 2021 were included in the study. Our population was then divided into two groups: group A, pre-Pandemic group, considered women who underwent surgical procedures from March 2019 to March 2020. Group B, Pandemic group, included patients who underwent breast surgery from March 9, 2020 to March 8, 2021. Results: A total of 524 newly diagnosed patients were evaluated;n=239 and n=285 in the pre-Pandemic and Pandemic, respectively. We observe an increase of patients with lymph-node involvement (35% vs 29% p= 0.14) and with a higher cancer stage (Stage III-IV 20% vs 15% p=0.13), but not statistically significative in the Pandemic Group compared to the pre-Pandemic group. Conclusions: In our analysis, the slowdown of CS for BC did not have a significant impact on BC diagnosis even though our data reveal a slight increase of advanced BC stage in pandemic group. Hence, a potential explanation could be identified in our efforts to keep diagnosis and treating oncological patients. Nevertheless, new data about post covid BC diagnosis are not still available. Reasonable, our findings are most likely going to be re-debeated in few years to clarify if this trend could be confirmed.