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The pandemic caused delays in routine cancer screenings — and missed cancer diagnoses

Published May 12, 2022 at 12:20 PM EDT
A medical radiology manipulator look at his screen as he takes a lung scan on a smoking woman. (Pascal Pochard/AFP via Getty Images)
A medical radiology manipulator look at his screen as he takes a lung scan on a smoking woman. (Pascal Pochard/AFP via Getty Images)

Since the start of the COVID pandemic, people have canceled or pushed off routine checkups, annual physicals and cancer screenings like colonoscopies and mammograms. Now that delay is catching up with us.

Dr. Brian Englum, assistant professor of surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center and the lead author of a study in the Journal Cancer on the Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the diagnosis of new cancers, talks about how the pandemic-caused delays in routine cancer screenings is leading to more advanced cancers that are harder to treat.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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