KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The PHIRI study aimed to investigate the changes in the time to 1 treatment for patients with BC during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Researchers found delays in Aragon and Wales were significant but not clinically relevant, suggesting structural issues.
The indirect impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic on healthcare services was studied by assessing changes in the trend of the time to 1 treatment for women 18 or older who were diagnosed and treated for breast cancer (BC) between 2017 and 2021.
Francisco Estupiñán-Romero and the team aimed to evaluate the population health information research infrastructure (PHIRI) study whether the pandemic caused significant delays in the initiation of patients with BC treatment across different regions.
They performed an inclusive analysis by conducting an observational retrospective longitudinal study based on aggregated data from patients in 4 European Union (EU) countries/regions, to investigate the time to receive BC treatment. They compiled outputs from a federated analysis to detect structural breakpoints and confirmed these breakpoints by comparing the trends observed with forecasted data after March 2020. Finally, several segmented regressions were built to explore the association of contextual factors with the observed changes in treatment delays.
About the monthly median time to surgery trend, they observed empirical structural breakpoints in Aragon (ranging from 9.20 to 17.38 days), Marche (from 37.17 to 42.04 days), and Wales (from 28.67 to 35.08 days). On the contrary, no empirical structural breakpoints were observed in Belgium (ranging from 21.25 to 23.95 days) after the pandemic’s beginning.
Furthermore, statistically significant differences between the observed trend and the forecasts for Aragon and Wales were confirmed. The interaction between the region and the pandemic’s start (before/after March 2020) was found to be significantly associated with the trend of delayed BC treatment at the population level.
The study concluded that, although the delays in Aragon and Wales were significant, they were not clinically relevant. However, the differing experiences between countries/regions indicated that structural factors beyond the pandemic influenced BC treatment delays.
This study received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101018317. PHIRI—Population Health Information Research Infrastructure (101018317).
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38946448/
Estupiñán-Romero F, Royo-Sierra S, González-Galindo J, et al. (2024). “Delayed treatment in breast cancer patients during the COVID-19 pandemic: a population health information research infrastructure (PHIRI) case study.” Eur J Public Health. 2024 Jul 1;34(Supplement_1):i50-i57. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/ckae038. PMID: 38946448.
