Anouk Eikelboom (IKNL) received her PhD in December for her research on ways to keep high-quality breast cancer care affordable and accessible. Among other things, it identified the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and identified ways to increase efficiency and reduce pressure on healthcare, such as personalizing screening and follow-up and de-escalating treatment.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, new treatment protocols have been introduced to ease healthcare burdens. For example, in the case of breast cancer, neoadjuvant endocrine therapy has often been used to postpone surgery and reduce hospital visits. During the first wave of the epidemic, breast cancer diagnoses decreased by 27.2%. The reasons were the discontinuation of the population survey, but also the reluctance of patients to consult their general practitioner if they had complaints. Following calls in the media and the 'Cancer Doesn't Wait' campaign, the number of GP contacts increased again, leading to more diagnoses.
The decrease in the number of diagnoses was greatest for DCIS (pre-breast cancer) and for stage I and II tumors. After the start of population screening, the number of breast cancer diagnoses returned to its previous level, despite the absence of any compensation. This is partly due to reduced testing capacity due to a shortage of laboratory technicians.
“Health care is able to quickly adapt to circumstances.”
PhD candidate Anouk Eikelboom
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