Cancer screening hasn ' t rebounded to prepandemic levels

Preventive health screenings, including those for screening mammography, have not rebounded to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels, a new study published February 2 in JAMA Health Forum found. Researchers led by Rishi Wadhera, MD, from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston found that eligible adults were significantly less likely to receive breast cancer screening and other types of health screening in 2021 compared with 2019. “These findings support the need for public health efforts to increase the use of preventive health screenings among eligible U.S. adults,” Wadhera and co-authors wrote. Previous research has explored how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected trends in preventive health screenings in the U.S., including those regarding breast cancer. The first few months of the pandemic in the U.S. saw healthcare services disrupted, with primary care visits declining. This has raised concerns among healthcare leaders as to the long-term consequences of missed screenings. The researchers pointed out that not much is known about whether healthcare access has returned to prepandemic levels in 2022. Wadhera and colleagues evaluated changes in measures of healthcare access and preventive health screenings among U.S. adults in 2021 and 2022 compared with prepandemic levels, as well as whether these patterns differed by race and ethnicity. It also studied whether changes in socioeconomic factors played a role in these differences. The researchers included data from 89...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - Category: Radiology Authors: Tags: Subspecialties Breast Imaging Source Type: news