The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted mammography screening and breast-cancer diagnoses. To assess how those disruptions later affected breast-cancer staging, Tim Duong, Ph.D., and colleagues conducted a retrospective study of more than 100,000 women screened at Montefiore Health System hospitals in the Bronx, lower Hudson Valley, and Westchester County from 2019 to 2023; nearly 1,800 women were ultimately diagnosed with breast cancer.

During the pandemic period April to August 2020, monthly screening mammography, diagnostic mammography, and breast cancer diagnoses dropped by 61%, 47%, and 42%, respectively, compared with the pre-pandemic months January 2019 to March 2020; those numbers largely recovered by September 2020. Unfortunately, pandemic-related interruptions in screening and breast-cancer diagnoses were associated with an increase in breast-cancer cases diagnosed at a more-severe stage later on: Compared with pre-pandemic baseline data, patients diagnosed with breast cancer from September 2020 to January 2021 were nearly 50% likelier to present with more extensive disease (clinical stage 2-4). The findings were published online on May 15 in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.

Dr. Duong is professor and vice chair for research of radiology at Einstein and Montefiore, professor of biochemistry, professor in the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience at Einstein, and a member of the National Cancer Institute-designated Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center.