Recovery strategies following COVID-19 disruption to cervical cancer screening and their impact on excess diagnoses.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted cervical cancer screening services. Assuming increases to screening capacity are unrealistic, we propose two recovery strategies: one extends the screening interval by 6 months for all and the other extends the interval by 36/60 months, but only for women who have already missed being screened.

Methods

Using routine statistics from England we estimate the number of women affected by delays to screening. We used published research to estimate the proportion of screening age women with high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and progression rates to cancer. Under two recovery scenarios, we estimate the impact of COVID-19 on cervical cancer over one screening cycle (3 years at ages 25-49 and 5 years at ages 50-64 years). The

SUBMITTER: Castanon A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8039040 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature