Abstract
There was an increase in undiagnosed skin cancers during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a significant backlog of untreated cases. However, it is unclear how this affected the long-term surgical management of tumors after the recovery from the pandemic. We aimed to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the long-term management of cutaneous tumors. We completed a retrospective cohort study of patients diagnosed with cutaneous tumors from June 1, 2018 to August 31, 2018 (pre-COVID cohort) and June 1, 2022 to August 31, 2022 (post-COVID cohort) at Atrium Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (AWFBMC). For these two cohorts, we compared the number of tumors diagnosed, severity of tumors, tumor duration prior to diagnosis, and time from diagnosis to treatment.
More tumors were diagnosed in the post-COVID cohort compared to the pre-COVID cohort (1045 vs. 850, respectively). There was a larger proportion of patients diagnosed within 6 months of tumor presentation in the pre-COVID cohort compared to the post-COVID cohort (56% vs. 46%, p=0.0005). There was a shorter time from diagnosis to treatment in the post-COVID cohort compared to the pre- COVID cohort (41.7 vs. 48.5 days, p=0.0015). There is still an increased caseload of cutaneous tumors at an academic, tertiary-care medical center in the U.S. However, treatment times have improved, possibly indicating increased productivity of the healthcare system.