(1) Background: This study evaluates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the incidence, treatment, and survival of adults diagnosed with malignant brain tumors in Belgium in 2020. (2) Methods: We examined patients aged 20 and older with malignant brain tumors (2004–2020) from the Belgian Cancer Registry database, assessing incidence, WHO performance status, vital status, and treatment data. We compared 2020 incidence rates with projected rates and age-standardized rates to 2015–2019. The Kaplan–Meier method was used to assess observed survival (OS). (3) Results: In 2020, there was an 8% drop in age-specific incidence rates, particularly for those over 50. Incidence rates plunged by 37% in April 2020 during the first COVID-19 peak but partially recovered by July. For all malignant brain tumors together, the two-year OS decreased by four percentage points (p.p.) in 2020 and three p.p. in 2019, compared to that in 2015–2018. Fewer patients (−9 p.p.) with glioblastoma underwent surgery, and the proportion of patients not receiving surgery, radiotherapy, or systemic therapy increased by six percentage points in 2020. (4) Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted the diagnosis, treatment strategies, and survival of brain tumor patients in Belgium during 2020. These findings should guide policymakers in future outbreak responses, emphasizing the need to maintain or adapt (neuro)-oncological care pathways and promote informed decision making when care capacity is limited.
Most studies investigating the impact of coronavirus infectious disease-19 (COVID-19) on mortality among patients with cancer were performed in a hospital setting, and the evidence is thus based on a selected and frail subset of patients. This study evaluates the excess mortality during the first wave of COVID-19 in a nationwide, prevalent cancer cohort in Belgium.Mortality was studied among almost 240,000 patients with cancer diagnosed between 2013 and 2018 and alive on January 1, 2020. The observed number of deaths in the months January to June 2020 was compared with the expected number of deaths applying the monthly mortality rates observed in the cancer cohort during the previous years. A comparison using the excess mortality rates from the general population was performed.An excess number of deaths of about 400 was observed in the month of April, coinciding with a peak of COVID-19 diagnoses in Belgium and corresponding to a 33% rise in mortality. A comparable number of excess deaths was estimated if the COVID-19 excess mortality rates from the general Belgian population were applied to the cancer cohort, stratified by age and sex.A considerable excess mortality in the Belgian cancer cohort was observed during the initial peak of COVID-19 in Belgium. The pattern of excess mortality was, however, not markedly different from that observed in the general population.These results suggest that the susceptibility of prevalent cancer patients to COVID-19-induced mortality during the first wave of the pandemic was comparable with the general population.
•A 44% reduction in diagnosis of invasive tumors during first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, in April 2020 versus April 2019.•Persistent 6% decline in diagnosis of all invasive cancers in 2020, with largest decline for head and neck cancer (14%).•Decline in diagnosis smaller for tumors with typically poorer prognosis (lung, pancreatic cancers).•More profound and persistent decline in diagnoses in older population (aged 80+ years).•Children and adolescents (0-19 years) less impacted in first wave (12% decline); 4% of diagnoses outstanding for all of 2020. BackgroundOncological care was considerably impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Worrisome declines in diagnostic procedures and cancer diagnoses in 2020 have been reported; however, nationwide, population-based evidence is limited. Quantification of the magnitude and distribution of the remaining outstanding diagnoses is likewise lacking.MethodsUsing accelerated delivery of data from pathology laboratories to the Belgian Cancer Registry, we compared the nationwide rates of new diagnoses of invasive cancers in 2020 to 2019.ResultsWe observed a 44% reduction in total diagnoses of invasive cancers in April 2020 compared with April 2019, coinciding with the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The reduction was largest in older patients and for skin cancers (melanoma and nonmelanoma). Reductions in diagnosis were less pronounced among children and adolescents (0-19 years). A smaller decline was observed for most cancers with typically poorer prognosis or obvious symptoms, including some hematological malignancies, lung, and pancreatic cancer. Suspension of organized population screening programs was reflected in a strong decline in diagnosis in the screening age groups for female breast cancer (56%) and for colorectal cancer in both men (49%) and women (60%). The number of diagnoses began to increase from the end of April and stabilized at the beginning of June at or just above 2019 levels. There has yet to be a complete recovery in cancer diagnoses, with an estimated 6%, or ∼4000 diagnoses, still outstanding for all of 2020. Among solid tumors, head and neck cancers have the largest remaining year-over-year decrease in diagnoses at 14%.ConclusionThese results add to the evidence of a profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on oncological care and identify groups at risk for continuing diagnostic delays. These data should stimulate health care providers worldwide to facilitate targeted, accessible, and efficient procedures for detection of cancers affected by this delay. Oncological care was considerably impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Worrisome declines in diagnostic procedures and cancer diagnoses in 2020 have been reported; however, nationwide, population-based evidence is limited. Quantification of the magnitude and distribution of the remaining outstanding diagnoses is likewise lacking. Using accelerated delivery of data from pathology laboratories to the Belgian Cancer Registry, we compared the nationwide rates of new diagnoses of invasive cancers in 2020 to 2019. We observed a 44% reduction in total diagnoses of invasive cancers in April 2020 compared with April 2019, coinciding with the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The reduction was largest in older patients and for skin cancers (melanoma and nonmelanoma). Reductions in diagnosis were less pronounced among children and adolescents (0-19 years). A smaller decline was observed for most cancers with typically poorer prognosis or obvious symptoms, including some hematological malignancies, lung, and pancreatic cancer. Suspension of organized population screening programs was reflected in a strong decline in diagnosis in the screening age groups for female breast cancer (56%) and for colorectal cancer in both men (49%) and women (60%). The number of diagnoses began to increase from the end of April and stabilized at the beginning of June at or just above 2019 levels. There has yet to be a complete recovery in cancer diagnoses, with an estimated 6%, or ∼4000 diagnoses, still outstanding for all of 2020. Among solid tumors, head and neck cancers have the largest remaining year-over-year decrease in diagnoses at 14%. These results add to the evidence of a profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on oncological care and identify groups at risk for continuing diagnostic delays. These data should stimulate health care providers worldwide to facilitate targeted, accessible, and efficient procedures for detection of cancers affected by this delay.
Population-based cancer registries are responsible for collecting incidence and survival data on all reportable neoplasms within a defined geographical area. During the last decades, the role of cancer registries has evolved beyond monitoring epidemiological indicators, as they are expanding their activities to studies on cancer aetiology, prevention, and quality of care. This expansion relies also on the collection of additional clinical data, such as stage at diagnosis and cancer treatment. While the collection of data on stage, according to international reference classification, is consolidated almost everywhere, data collection on treatment is still very heterogeneous in Europe. This article combines data from a literature review and conference proceedings together with data from 125 European cancer registries contributing to the 2015 ENCR-JRC data call to provide an overview of the status of using and reporting treatment data in population-based cancer registries. The literature review shows that there is an increase in published data on cancer treatment by population-based cancer registries over the years. In addition, the review indicates that treatment data are most often collected for breast cancer, the most frequent cancer in women in Europe, followed by colorectal, prostate and lung cancers, which are also more common. Treatment data are increasingly being reported by cancer registries, though further improvements are required to ensure their complete and harmonised collection. Sufficient financial and human resources are needed to collect and analyse treatment data. Clear registration guidelines are to be made available to increase the availability of real-world treatment data in a harmonised way across Europe.
As part of its core business of gathering population-based information on new cancer diagnoses, the Belgian Cancer Registry receives free-text pathology reports, describing results of (pre-)malignant specimens. These reports are provided by 82 laboratories and written in 2 national languages, Dutch or French. For breast cancer, the reports characterize the status of estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and Erb-b2 receptor tyrosine kinase 2. These biomarkers are related with tumor growth and prognosis and are essential to define therapeutic management. The availability of population-scale information about their status in breast cancer patients can therefore be considered crucial to enrich real-world scientific studies and to guide public health policies regarding personalized medicine. The main objective of this study is to expand the data available at the Belgian Cancer Registry by automatically extracting the status of these biomarkers from the pathology reports. Various types of numeric features are computed from over 1,300 manually annotated reports linked to breast tumors diagnosed in 2014. A range of popular machine learning classifiers, such as support vector machines, random forests and logistic regressions, are trained on this data and compared using their F1 scores on a separate validation set. On a held-out test set, the best performing classifiers achieve F1 scores ranging from 0.89 to 0.92 for the four classification tasks. The extraction is thus reliable and allows to significantly increase the availability of this valuable information on breast cancer receptor status at a population level.
Abstract Background Faecal immunochemical tests (FITs) have replaced guaiac-based faecal occult blood test (gFOBTs) in several colorectal cancer (CRC) screening programmes. We aimed to evaluate the benefits of this transition based on the Wallonia–Brussels-organised CRC screening programme. Methods A total of 1,569,868 individuals aged 50–74 years, who were invited to screening during 2009–2017, were studied by linking their screening records with insurance, pathology and cancer data in the Belgian Cancer Registry. We compared neoplasm detection rates and positive predictive values (PPVs) of gFOBT and FIT at 15 µg haemoglobin per gram cut-off in screen-naive individuals. We furthermore examined the incidence rates of interval cancer in gFOBT- and FIT-based screening programme. Results Advanced neoplasms were detected less frequently by gFOBT (0.8%) than by FIT (1.3%), with a difference of 0.5% ( P < 0.01). PPVs were lower for gFOBT (15.1%) than for FIT (21.7%) for advanced neoplasms (difference 6.6%, P < 0.01). Compared to participants with negative gFOBT, those with negative FIT were 77% less likely to develop interval cancer (incidence rate ratio 0.23, 95% confidence interval 0.16–0.33). Conclusion Our study demonstrated that in an organised CRC screening programme, replacing gFOBT with FIT improved neoplasm detection rate and substantially reduced interval cancer incidence.
In Belgium, breast cancer mortality has been monitored since 1954, whereas cancer incidence data have only been made available for a few years. In this article we update historical trends of breast cancer mortality and describe the recent breast cancer incidence. Incidence data were extracted from the Belgium Cancer Registry from 2004 to 2006 for the Walloon and Brussels Regions and Belgium, and from 1999 to 2006 for the Flemish Region. The Directorate-general Statistics and Economic information provided the mortality data for the years 1954-1999 and 2004. The regional authorities of the Flemish and Brussels Regions provided the mortality data for the years 2000-2003 and 2005-2006. In 2004, the World age-standardised breast cancer incidence for the whole of Belgium was 110 per 100, 000 person-years for all ages; and 172, 390 and 345 per 100, 000 person-years for the 35-49, 50-69, and 70+ age groups, respectively. The incidence rate was slightly higher in each age group in the Brussels Region. In Flanders, where the incidence could be observed during a longer period, an increase was observed until 2003 in the 50-69 age group, followed by a decrease. To the contrary, in the oldest age group, incidence continued to rise over the whole period, whereas no change in incidence was observed between 1999 and 2006 in the 35-49 age group. Mortality increased until the late 1980s and afterwards decreased in all regions and in age groups younger than 70. In women of 70 years and older, the decline began later. The burden of breast cancer in Belgium is very high. In 2004, Belgium ranked first for the age-standardised incidence rate in Europe for all ages combined and in the 35-49 and 50-69 age groups. The impact of the known risk factors and of mammographic screening should be further studied. The mortality rate in Belgium ranked lower than incidence, suggesting favourable survival. Plausible explanations for the discrepancy between incidence and mortality are discussed.
Abstract Introduction Tumors of the central nervous system are among the leading causes of cancer-related death in children. Population-based cancer survival reflects the overall effectiveness of a health care system in managing cancer. Inequity in access to care world-wide may result in survival disparities. Methods We considered children (0–14 years) diagnosed with a brain tumor during 2000–2014, regardless of tumor behavior. Data underwent a rigorous, three-phase quality control as part of CONCORD-3. We implemented a revised version of the International Classification of Childhood Cancer (third edition) to control for under-registration of non-malignant astrocytic tumors. We estimated net survival using the unbiased nonparametric Pohar Perme estimator. Results The study included 67,776 children. We estimated survival for 12 histology groups, each based on relevant ICD-O-3 codes. Age-standardized 5-year net survival for low-grade astrocytoma ranged between 84% and 100% world-wide during 2000–2014. In most countries, 5-year survival was 90% or more during 2000–2004, 2005–2009, and 2010–2014. Global variation in survival for medulloblastoma was much wider, with age-standardized 5-year net survival between 47% and 86% for children diagnosed during 2010–2014. Conclusions To the best of our knowledge, this study provides the largest account to date of global trends in population-based survival for brain tumors in children, by histology. We devised an enhanced version of ICCC-3 to account for differences in cancer registration practices world-wide. Our findings may have public health implications, because low-grade glioma is 1 of the 6 index childhood cancers included by WHO in the Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer.
BackgroundDespite guideline recommendations, reports suggest that a proportion of patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer (LA/MBC) might not receive endocrine therapy. The aims of this study were to estimate the proportion of postmenopausal patients with an initial (primary) diagnosis of HR-positive LA/MBC in Europe, and to assess the administration of endocrine treatment in these patients.Materials and MethodsFourteen national and regional cancer registries across Europe were invited to participate in this observational study. Six registries each provided anonymized clinical information on > 5000 postmenopausal women with breast cancer diagnosed between January 2000 and December 2014, including age at diagnosis, estrogen and/or progesterone receptor status, disease stage, and receipt of endocrine therapy. The proportion of patients with an initial diagnosis of HR-positive LA/MBC and, of these, the proportion who received endocrine therapy, was calculated.ResultsRegistries from Belgium, England, Ireland, Norway, The Netherlands, and Munich, Germany provided data. In total, 316,680 postmenopausal women were diagnosed with breast cancer, including 244,268 with known HR status and disease stage. Of these patients, 19,002 (7.8%) had a primary diagnosis of HR-positive LA/MBC. This proportion ranged from 5.4% (N = 4484) in England to 12.7% (N = 4085) in Germany. Most of these patients (n = 14,157; 74.5%) received endocrine treatment, ranging from 55.5% (n = 445) in Norway to 88.1% (n = 443) in Belgium.ConclusionThese results indicate that a sizeable proportion of postmenopausal patients in Europe received a primary diagnosis of HR-positive LA/MBC, and that almost three-quarters received subsequent endocrine therapy as per guideline recommendations.
Het Federaal Kenniscentrum voor de Gezondheidszorg (KCE) publiceert een set van 15 kwaliteitsindicatoren voor de behandeling van eierstokkanker. Dit maakt deel uit van een continu proces om de kwaliteit van de kankerzorg in België te verbeteren en is reeds met succes toegepast bij andere types kanker. De 15 indicatoren werden berekend voor alle ziekenhuizen, die een individueel feedbackrapport van de Stichting Kankerregister zullen ontvangen, zodat zij hun sterke en zwakke punten kunnen identificeren en waar nodig de zorg verbeteren. In een tweede deel toont de studie aan dat de kans van patiënten op overleven duidelijk hoger is in ziekenhuizen die elk jaar een groot aantal patiënten behandelen. Het KCE pleit er dan ook voor de behandeling van eierstokkanker in een beperkt aantal referentiecentra te concentreren. Bij de erkenning van deze referentiecentra mag het aantal behandelde patiënten zeker niet het enige criterium zijn. Dans une seconde partie, l’étude a démontré que les chances de survie sont nettement plus élevées dans les hôpitaux qui traitent un grand nombre de patientes chaque année. Le KCE plaide donc pour une concentration de la prise en charge du cancer de l’ovaire dans un nombre limité de centres de référence. La reconnaissance de ces centres de référence ne doit cependant pas se baser sur le seul nombre de patientes traitées.