Impact of COVID-19 on the incidence of prostate cancer among White and Black Veterans.

Authors

null

Kyung Min Lee

VA Informatics and Computing Infrastructure, VA Salt Lake City Health Care System, Salt Lake City, UT

Kyung Min Lee , Kripa Guram , Patrick Alba , Tori Anglin-Foote , Brian Robison , Brent S Rose , Julie Ann Lynch

Organizations

VA Informatics and Computing Infrastructure, VA Salt Lake City Health Care System, Salt Lake City, UT, VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, CA

Research Funding

Other Government Agency

Background: Early-stage prostate cancer (PCa) is typically detected on prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening and subsequent prostate biopsy, healthcare interventions that are considered routine elective procedures. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted routine healthcare screenings and interventions. We sought to determine whether delayed screening and diagnostic workup of PCa was associated with increased rates of incident PCa, high-grade Gleason, and metastatic disease at diagnosis. Methods: We used the Corporate Data Warehouse of the Veterans Health Administration to collect PSA, prostate biopsy, PCa diagnosis, Gleason score, and metastasis information of White and Black Veterans aged 40 years or older newly diagnosed with PCa from January 2019 through June 2021. For each month, we calculated rates of PSA, prostate biopsy, and incident PCa per 100,000 men and plotted monthly rates by race. We performed descriptive analyses to compare age at first PSA, age at diagnosis, baseline PSA, Gleason scores, and metastasis pre- and post-January 2020, the month in which the U.S. declared COVID-19 a public health emergency. Results: The decrease in the rate of PSA screening immediately after January 2020 was similar in both White and Black Veterans (7% vs. 6%). However, the magnitude of reduction in the rate of prostate biopsy and the rate diagnosis of incident PCa were five times larger among Black Veterans compared to White Veterans (11% vs. 2% for both biopsy and diagnosis rates). Among the 17,771 White and 9,610 Black Veterans with incident PCa, the rate of Gleason of 4+3 or greater and the rate of metastatic disease at diagnosis increased three months after the pandemic in both race groups with comparable magnitude (2-3% increase in high-grade Gleason, 1% increase in metastatic disease). Conclusions: Utilization patterns indicated that while the decrease in PSA screening after the pandemic was similar in White and Black Veterans, reductions in prostate biopsy and diagnosis of incident PCa were five times greater in Blacks than Whites. Further research including risk-adjusted modeling is needed to determine whether Black Veterans were disproportionately affected by the pandemic-related disruptions in PSA screening and diagnostic workup of prostate cancer.

Patient characteristics of incident prostate cancer cases by race before and three months after COVID-19 pandemic.

White
Black
Pre
Post
Pre
Post
Number of patients
10,316
7,455
5,363
4,247
Gleason≥ 4+3 (%)
4297 (42)
3348 (45)
2164 (40)
1775 (42)
Metastatic at diagnosis (%)
1086 (11)
901 (12)
433 (8)
402 (9)
Age at first PSA, median (IQR)
59 (11)
59 (11)
53 (12)
53 (11)
Age at diagnosis, median (IQR)
70 (7)
71 (8)
65 (10)
65 (11)
PSA at diagnosis, median (IQR)
7.0 (6.2)
7.3 (6.7)
7.2 (6.8)
7.3 (7.4)

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Abstract Details

Meeting

2022 ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium

Session Type

Poster Session

Session Title

Poster Session A: Prostate Cancer

Track

Prostate Cancer - Advanced,Prostate Cancer - Localized

Sub Track

Cancer Disparities

Citation

J Clin Oncol 40, 2022 (suppl 6; abstr 29)

DOI

10.1200/JCO.2022.40.6_suppl.029

Abstract #

29

Poster Bd #

Online Only

Abstract Disclosures

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