Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the time between detection of cervical precancerous lesions and their management

Introduction: the COVID-19 pandemic has affected women's health in general, and in particular their sexual and reproductive rights. Within the context of changes in health care services due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the screening and follow up of cervical precancerous lesions could be affected, and in turn, this could pre-vent timely diagnosis and early treatment. This study aims to report the period of time be-tween pathological findings in screening tests and the treatment of precan-cerous lesions of cervical cancer, analyze it within the context of deadlines set in the Ministry of Health regu-lations in force, and compare it to pre-pandemic dead-lines and time frames during the COVID-19 pandemic.Method: observational, analytical and transversal study conducted by means of analyzing the situation before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The study included users who underwent surgical conization at the Pereira Rossell Hospital during two periods of time: Between March 1, 2019 and February 29, 2020 and be-tween March 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021.Results: average number of days from the PAP test until conization was 245 days for the first period and 242 for the second one. The percentage of patients that comply with the Ministerial decree in both periods is lower than 5%.Conclusions: the study found time to treatment in the follow up and management of users did not increase during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the times ob-served widely exceed the deadlines set in the minis-terial decree in both periods, that is before and during the pandemic.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the time between the detection of premalignant lesions of the cervix and their treatment

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected women's health and, in particular, sexual and reproductive rights. In the context of healthcare changes due to the COVID 19 pandemic, the screening and follow-up of premalignant lesions of cervical cancer (CC) could be affected, putting their timely diagnosis and early treatment at risk. The objective of this study is to report the times elapsed between the result of the pathological screening and the treatment of premalignant CCU lesions, comparing them with the periods established by the current ministerial ordinance and comparing the times observed before and during the pandemic.