COVID-19 Pandemic

Browsing: COVID-19 Pandemic

The latest news effecting cancer patients and oncology service delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic

Study reveals reductions in breast cancer screening uptake during COVID-19 pandemic

By ONA Editor on September 19, 2023 Breast Cancer, COVID-19 Pandemic, Featured News, Latest News, Screening & Prevention

A review of COVID-19 studies globally has revealed reductions in breast cancer screening participation during 2020, with differences between geographic regions and healthcare settings. The findings, published today in eLife, suggest the need for continued monitoring of access to breast cancer screening and early diagnosis services, to help identify if prevention services may need strengthening to increase participation for disadvantaged groups. Breast cancer is the most common cancer worldwide, with 2.3 million cases diagnosed and 685,000 deaths in 2020. Mammography-based screening programs allow for the early detection and treatment of breast cancer to help improve patient outcomes, but these programs were…

Additional COVID-19 boosters can benefit cancer patients—how often they should get them depends on their treatment

By ONA Editor on August 23, 2023 COVID-19 Pandemic, Latest News

For many, the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic seems over. However, for patients whose immune systems are compromised by cancer or by cancer therapies, fear of COVID-19 infection and severe disease remains very real. Currently, CDC guidance recommends that immunocompromised patients receive COVID-19 booster shots “as needed.” While this flexibility is useful for patients with complex medical conditions, more specific guidance is lacking as to when additional COVID-19 boosting would be most effective. New research led by scientists at Yale University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte provides this critically needed information. The rate at which additional COVID-19 boosters…

84% cut in Covid deaths for UK cancer patients following vaccine rollout

By ONA Editor on July 30, 2023 COVID-19 Pandemic, Latest News

Cancer patients saw a significant fall in Covid-related hospitalisations and mortality following the rollout of vaccines in the first panoramic study of its kind. The research published in Scientific Reports looked at the impact of the global pandemic on case-outcome rates for cancer patients across a 21-month period from November 2020 to August 2022. The team of researchers led by the University of Birmingham found that hospitalisations in the period fell from nearly one in three patients (30.58%) to one in 13 patients (7.45%); and, case-mortality rates fell from more than one in five patients (20.53%) to less than one in 30…

COVID-19 booster vaccine doses strengthen immunity in blood cancer patients

By ONA Editor on July 12, 2023 COVID-19 Pandemic, Latest News

Research by the University of Southampton, UK, into the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in people with lymphoma has shown that repeated vaccination increases their ability to prevent infection from the virus, particularly after four doses. The finding, from the two-year PROSECO study, is important because blood cancer patients have compromised immune systems – either as a result of cancer, or from cancer treatments. EXCLUSIVE TO THE ONCOLOGY NETWORK: FREE REGISTRATION FOR HCPs This leaves them more vulnerable to COVID-19 than other people and raises questions over how well they respond to vaccination. Latest findings from the study are published in the…

New breathalyser sniffs out COVID – could be used to detect cancer

By ONA Editor on May 18, 2023 COVID-19 Pandemic, Emerging Tech, Featured News, Latest News

With each breath, humans exhale more than 1,000 distinct molecules, producing a unique chemical fingerprint or “breathprint” rich with clues about what’s going on inside the body. For decades, scientists have sought to harness that information, turning to dogs, rats and even bees to literally sniff out cancer, diabetes, tuberculosis and more. Scientists from CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA, have made an important leap forward in the quest to diagnose disease using exhaled breath, reporting that a new laser-based breathalyser powered by artificial intelligence (AI) can detect COVID-19 in real-time with excellent accuracy.…

New study shows more deaths with cancer as contributing cause during first year of pandemic

By ONA Editor on April 29, 2023 COVID-19 Pandemic, Latest News

In a new study, American Cancer Society (ACS) researchers discovered deaths with cancer as the underlying or primary cause decreased in the United States during the first year of the pandemic in 2020 compared to 2019, continuing the decreasing trend from prior years. In contrast, mortality rates with cancer as a contributing cause were higher in 2020 compared to 2019, reversing the decreasing trend from prior years. The study was published today in the Journal Oncology Practice (JOP). “Individuals living with cancer were at higher risk of COVID-19 infection and experiencing more severe symptoms due to their health conditions and treatment-related immune suppression,” said Jingxuan…

Available evidence fails to show full impact of COVID-19 on cancer

By ONA Editor on April 17, 2023 COVID-19 Pandemic, Featured News, Latest News

The COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial and diverse impact on cancer care, but we still don’t know how this affected prognosis, according to a study published in eLife. The findings suggest that more and better-quality research is needed to understand the full impact of COVID-19 on people with cancer, specifically in low-income settings and looking at longer-term outcomes. LISTEN EXCLUSIVELY ON THE ONCOLOGY NETWORK LISTEN TO EPISODE 3: TISSUE ACQUISITION – HOW TO DO IT BETTER WITH LLOYD RIDLEY AND NICK WILSMORE The authors conducted an umbrella review of systematic reviews, which collect and summarise all studies and evidence on…

One in two cancer patients may develop long COVID

By ONA Editor on February 10, 2023 COVID-19 Pandemic, Latest News

More than one in two cancer patients at a US cancer centre experienced symptoms of long COVID-19 for more than six months after initial infection, according to a study published today in eLife. The findings are comparable to reported incidence of long COVID-19 in the general population but also show that women undergoing cancer treatment seem at higher risk than men. In the general population, reports of the prevalence of long COVID-19 – also known as post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC) – vary from 10% to 87%, with symptoms persisting beyond 30 days in patients who had severe initial…

Building capacity in digital health and informatics as COVID years press on

By ONA Editor on January 17, 2023 COVID-19 Pandemic

Health systems struggling to cope with the pandemic and budget and staff shortages have an opportunity to make service and operating improvements with health informatics and digital health applications. While pressure mounts to maintain “business as usual” operations, researchers from Flinders University, James Cook University and Hong Kong’s Tung Wah Colllege have highlighted the benefits of expanding health management’s use of these key areas to improve productivity and meet increasing resource challenges to provide safe, quality care. “These two rapidly growing disciplines are becoming increasingly important to the sustainability of health service provision, as was highlighted through the COVID-19 pandemic,”…

Study finds that patients with cancer and a suppressed immune system are at high risk for severe COVID if treated with systemic drug therapies

By ONA Editor on November 9, 2022 COVID-19 Pandemic, Immunotherapy, Latest News

Patients with cancer and a weakened immune system who are treated with immunotherapies tend to fare far worse from COVID-19 than those who haven’t received such therapies in the three months before their COVID diagnosis, show findings in a new study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and across the US, Canada, and Mexico. Researchers found worse outcomes in both the disease itself as well as the fierce immune response that sometimes accompanies it. The study, posted online today by the journal JAMA Oncology, also found that immunocompromised patients treated with drug agents other than immunotherapies had more severe COVID than untreated…

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