Lung cancer and Covid-19: lessons learnt from the pandemic and where do we go from here?

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted all aspects of healthcare, and while the worst may be over, its broader impact on health services, such as cancer diagnosis and treatment, is likely to be profound. We examine, in this paper, how our response to Covid-19 impacted on the recognition, referral, and diagnosis of individuals with lung cancer in primary care. The overlapping nature of symptoms of Covid-19 and lung cancer posed a particular challenge, and lung cancer referrals have been slow to return to pre-pandemic levels. Strategies need to be implemented to ensure the impact of future variants does not derail the precarious recovery we are now witnessing in many countries—it is vital that the gains we have made in earlier diagnosis are not lost. The pandemic has underlined the importance of improving early diagnosis through public awareness raising of symptoms, rapid diagnostic facilities, reduced primary care diagnostic intervals and, potentially, the introduction of screening in high-risk groups.