How this fits in

The COVID-19 pandemic caused huge disruption to primary care services and as the majority of cancers are first detected in primary care these changes have had an impact on the normal routes to cancer diagnosis. In this study, participants described how the initial decrease in patient consultations allowed them to reconfigure their practices, but also resulted in higher rates of late cancer presentations and diagnosis after the first lockdown. During the second and third lockdowns, participants described how they used all means available to them to get patients who had already experienced delays investigated. The greater use of technology during the consultation was thought to help with streamlining some processes, but participants were also cautious about how easily vital information could be omitted and prevent the GP from seeing the full picture of the patient’s condition or make the use of clinical intuition difficult. These results illustrate how the balance was tipped in favour of reducing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 pandemic to the detriment of the assessment of cancer risk.