The impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on perioperative chemotherapy for breast cancer

BACKGROUND: Since it was first reported in December 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) spread rapidly across the globe resulting in a pandemic. As of August 2022, seven outbreak peaks have been confirmed in Tokyo, and the numbers of new cases in the fifth and later outbreak periods have been far greater than in the preceding periods. This retrospective study examined the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on perioperative chemotherapy for breast cancer. METHODS: Patients with breast cancer who received perioperative chemotherapy at the National Cancer Center Hospital East were divided into 2 groups: 120 and 384 patients who started chemotherapy before and during the pandemic, respectively. The incidence of critical events that had potential detrimental effects on the prognosis, such as start of adjuvant chemotherapy ≥91 days after surgery and relative dose intensity of chemotherapy <85% were compared between groups. RESULTS: No significant difference in the incidence of critical events was found. When stratified by outbreak period, the incidence of critical events was positively correlated with the increasing number of new cases of COVID‐19 (r = 0.83, p = 0.04). Moreover, 25/173 patients (14%) who started perioperative chemotherapy during the fifth and sixth outbreak periods developed COVID‐19 infection, 80% of whom (20/25) had a delay or interruption to their surgery or other perioperative treatments. CONCLUSIONS: Although the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on perioperative chemotherapy on whole groups of patients was not evident when comparing periods before and after the pandemic, the impact is becoming prominent in parallel with increasing numbers of new COVID‐19 cases.