Cancer deaths increased during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, according to research published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
This increase reversed a previous long-term trend of declining deaths among cancer patients, researchers noted.
For this study, researchers used the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s WONDER database to analyze age-standardized cancer-related deaths between 1999 and 2021.
In the 2 years before the pandemic began (2018-2019), the total number of registered cancer-related deaths was 1,327,399. For 90% of these deaths, cancer was listed as the underlying cause of death.
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In the first 2 years of the pandemic (2020-2021), the number of registered cancer-related deaths increased to 1,379,643, and 88% of these deaths had cancer listed as the underlying cause of death. Cancer was a contributing cause in 29,920 deaths from COVID-19 and in 142,160 non-COVID-19 deaths, the researchers noted.
During 2019-2021, the rate of deaths with multiple causes significantly increased for all cancers (annual percent change [APC], 1.6%). This reversed the decreasing trend from 1999 to 2019 (ACP, -1.6%). Results were similar across cancer types, as seen in the table below.
|
Changes in Mortality by Cancer Type (Multiple Causes of Death) |
||
|
Cancer type |
Time period |
APC |
|
Respiratory and intrathoracic cancers |
1999-2002 |
-0.5% |
|
2002-2010 |
-1.9% |
|
|
2010-2014 |
-2.9% |
|
|
2014-2019 |
-4.2% |
|
|
2019-2021 |
-1.1% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Prostate cancer |
1999-2014 |
-3.5% |
|
2014-2019 |
-.05% |
|
|
2019-2021 |
5.1% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hematologic cancers |
1999-2008 |
-2.0% |
|
2008-2011 |
-0.9% |
|
|
2011-2019 |
-1.7% |
|
|
2019-2021 |
4.8% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Digestive cancers |
1999-2008 |
-1.5% |
|
2008-2019 |
-0.8% |
|
|
2019-2021 |
1.5% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Female breast cancer |
1999-2001 |
-1.0% |
|
2001-2007 |
-2.2% |
|
|
2007-2015 |
-1.7% |
|
|
2015-2019 |
-0.7% |
|
|
2019-2021 |
2.5% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Female genital cancers |
1999-2009 |
-1.1% |
|
2009-2019 |
-0.5% |
|
|
2019-2021 |
2.4% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Urinary tract cancer |
1999-2002 |
0.3% |
|
2002-2015 |
-0.5% |
|
|
2015-2019 |
-1.4% |
|
|
2019-2021 |
3.1% |
|
Reference
Fedeli U, Barbiellini C, Han X, Jemal A. Changes in cancer-related mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. J Natl Cancer Inst. Published online September 9, 2023. doi:10.1093/jnci/djad191
