(HealthDay News) — US cancer incidence trends improved in 2021, but continued to be lower than expected, according to a study published online Sept. 6 in JAMA Network Open.
Todd Burus, from the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional, population-based study of cancer incidence trends using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results 22 (SEER-22) Registries Database to examine observed versus expected cancer rate trends for January 2020 to December 2021.
In 2020 and 2021, the SEER-22 registries reported 1,578,697 cancer cases (50.6% among males and 57.6% among persons aged 65 years or older). The researchers found that all-sites cancer incidence rates were 9.4, 2.7 and 6.0% lower than expected in 2020, 2021, and in both years combined, respectively, resulting in 149,577 potentially undiagnosed cancer cases. Of the four screening-detected cancers, in 2021, there was a significant recovery for female breast cancer only (expected rates exceeded by 2.5%), while significant reductions persisted for lung cancer and cervical cancer (9.1 and 4.5% lower than expected, respectively), especially for early stage at diagnosis. Among female individuals, persons aged younger than 65 years, and persons of non-Hispanic Asian and Pacific Islander race and ethnicity, rates of all-sites cancer incidence returned to prepandemic trends.
“This study suggests that cancer cases in the US continued to be underdiagnosed during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the authors write. “Particular attention should be directed at strategies to immediately increase cancer screenings to make up lost ground and prevent a future surplus of late-stage diagnoses.”
One author disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
