Although the lockdowns have led to thousands of delayed skin cancer diagnoses, the delayed care during the corona pandemic seems to have had little effect on tumor thickness and tumor stage. Epidemiologist Marieke Louwman (IKNL) and dermatologist Marlies Wakkee (Erasmus MC) conclude this after analyzing data from the NKR and PALGA.
During the first lockdown, half fewer basal cell carcinomas and a third fewer squamous cell carcinomas were diagnosed than during the same period in previous years. As a result, nearly 12,000 basal cell carcinomas and more than 1,100 fewer squamous cell carcinomas were detected over the whole of 2020 than in previous years.
For melanomas, they saw a similar trend. The cumulative number of primary melanoma diagnoses in 2020 (7720) was lower than in 2019 (7866), but the number of melanomas diagnosed after the second lockdown in 2021 (2439) was actually higher compared to the same period in 2019 (2090).
The mean Breslow thickness did not differ statistically between the pre-COVID era and the period studied after. The researchers did find a small shift towards a more unfavorable tumor stage during the first lockdown.
They found no differences for squamous cell carcinomas and for basal cell carcinomas this was not investigated as they grow very slowly. The outcome for melanomas may be relatively more favorable because the delayed care mainly affected people with slow-growing skin tumors.
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