Conclusions
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a major impact on the medical care of patients with head and neck cancer in terms of outpatient diagnosis and inpatient treatment. The results of this study suggest that, in the context of pandemic-related restrictions imposed in non-oncological hospitals, specialized cancer centres must be prepared to consult, diagnose, and treat greater numbers of patients. The increased time from first visit to treatment initiation observed in this study (and others) suggests that greater efforts need to be made to avoid diagnostic delays. Differences in the treatment recommendations between the two periods should be evaluated in future studies to determine how this affects survival curves. Finally, it would be valuable to determine whether the significant increase in the number of patients with nasopharyngeal cancer is virus-related.
Table 1. Patient demographic characteristics and time frames for disease diagnosis and treatment
Table 2 . Tumour location and disease stage
Table 3. Treatment type characteristics