Additional Data

The authors have put together a very commendable review of published studies of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the diagnosis and treatment of colorectal cancer in Germany (1). They included three studies of numbers of first diagnoses of colorectal cancer in 2020 compared with the numbers to be expected on the basis of cancer registry data from the preceding years. The analyses were based on cancer registry data from Bavaria, Saxony, and Berlin-Brandenburg (January to September 2020) and were published in an abbreviated version in Deutsches Ärzteblatt in 2021 and in the statutory health insurers’ annual hospital report 2022. In all three studies the number of first diagnoses was slightly below the number that would have been expected on the basis of preceding years. We wish to add to this review a study published in December 2022 in Lancet Regional Health Europe, which on the basis of cancer registry data for Saarland carried out a differentiated analysis in the cases diagnosed in the four quarters of 2020 in comparison to the cases that were to be expected on the basis of the preceding years 2015–2019 (2). For the entire year 2020 the number of diagnosed cases was 17% below the expected value. But this discrepancy differed widely in the four quarters and was particularly pronounced in the months April to June 2020, which were most severely affected by the first pandemic wave (minus 30%). But in the other quarters too, “deficits” were seen of 11–16%. Extrapolated to Germany, these data imply a delay in the diagnosis of some 10 000 incident cases of colorectal cancer from 2020 to later years, and the effects for colorectal cancer mortality can be expected to be substantial (3).