Conclusions
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a major impact on the medical care of
patients with head and neck cancer in terms of outpatient diagnosis and
inpatient treatment. The results of this study suggest that, in the
context of pandemic-related restrictions imposed in non-oncological
hospitals, specialized cancer centres must be prepared to consult,
diagnose, and treat greater numbers of patients. The increased time from
first visit to treatment initiation observed in this study (and others)
suggests that greater efforts need to be made to avoid diagnostic
delays. Differences in the treatment recommendations between the two
periods should be evaluated in future studies to determine how this
affects survival curves. Finally, it would be valuable to determine
whether the significant increase in the number of patients with
nasopharyngeal cancer is virus-related.
Table 1. Patient demographic characteristics and time frames
for disease diagnosis and treatment
Table 2 . Tumour location and disease stage
Table 3. Treatment type characteristics