VIDEO: How the COVID-19 pandemic has affected prostate cancer care

Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify cperla@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

The issue is that prostate cancer in general is, is felt to be, you know, an indolent slow growing cancer. Also, as I mentioned, there's some debate as to the benefit of screening for prostate cancer with COVID on top of that, the screening and treatment for prostate cancer gets, tends to get delayed. So patients are less likely to see their primary care physician to initiate prostate cancer screening. Because again, this is felt to be a slow growing cancer and felt to be safe, to be delayed, also treatment because of the slow growing nature of the cancer patients feel that it potentially can be safe to delay their, their treatment, their definitive treatment for prostate cancer.

And so we've seen that we've seen patients, who've had a delay in the diagnosis and have put off treatment for several months, if not, you know, over a year during this COVID pandemic, how that will impact outcomes in patients with prostate cancer. I guess we won't know, probably for several years, we're hoping that these delays did not adversely affect people, but again, as we come out of the pandemic, now, we're hoping that patients will re-establish care and, and try to continue with their screening and timely treatment for prostate cancer to avoid unnecessary delays.