Suspension of disease screening and nonurgent procedures because of the COVID-19 pandemic will negatively impact long-term outcomes of GI and liver disease, and people of color will be disproportionately affected, according to a leading expert.
Novel, multipronged approaches are needed to overcome widening disparities in gastroenterology and hepatology, said Rachel Issaka, MD, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented drops in breast, colorectal, and cervical cancer screenings,” Dr. Issaka said during an AGA FORWARD Program webinar. Screening rates for these diseases are down 83%-90%, she said.
“Certainly this creates a backlog of cancer screenings that need to occur, which poses very significant challenges for health systems as they’re adapting to this new state of health care that we have to provide,” Dr. Issaka said.
During her presentation, Dr. Issaka first addressed pandemic-related issues in colorectal cancer (CRC).
The sudden decrease in colonoscopies has already affected diagnoses, she said, as 32% fewer cases of CRC were diagnosed in April 2020 compared with April 2019, a finding that is “obviously very concerning.” All downstream effects remain to be seen; however, one estimate suggests that over the next decade, delayed screening may lead to an additional 4,500 deaths from CRC.
“These effects are particularly noticeable in medically underserved communities where CRC morbidity and mortality are highest,” Dr. Issaka wrote, as coauthor of a study published in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.
Dr. Issaka and colleagues predict that the pandemic will likely worsen “persistent CRC disparities” in African-American and Hispanic communities, including relatively decreased screening participation, delayed follow-up of abnormal stool results, limited community-based research and partnerships, and limited community engagement and advocacy.
“COVID-19 related pauses in medical care, as well as shifts in resource allocation and workforce deployment, threaten decades worth of work to improve CRC disparities in medically underserved populations,” wrote Dr. Issaka and colleagues.
Dr. Issaka described similar issues in hepatology. She referred to a recent opinion article by Tapper and colleagues, which predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic will impact patients with liver disease in three waves: first, by delaying liver transplants, elective procedures, imaging, and routine patient follow-up; second, by increasing emergent decompensations, transplant wait-list dropouts, and care deferrals; and third, by losing patients to follow-up, resulting in missed diagnoses, incomplete cancer screening, and progressive disease.
“This could disproportionately impact Black, Hispanic, and Native-American populations, who may have already had difficulty accessing [liver care],” Dr. Issaka said.
To mitigate growing disparities, Dr. Issaka proposed a variety of strategies for CRC and liver disease.
For CRC screening, Dr. Issaka suggested noninvasive modalities, including mailed fecal immunochemical tests (FIT), with focused follow-up on patients with highest FIT values. For those conducting CRC research, Dr. Issaka recommended using accessible technology, engaging with community partners, providing incentives where appropriate, and other methods. For cirrhosis care, Dr. Issaka suggested that practitioners turn to telehealth and remote care, including weight monitoring, cognitive function testing, home medication delivery, and online education.
More broadly, Dr. Issaka called for universal health insurance not associated with employment, research funding for health disparities, sustainable employment wages, climate justice, desegregation of housing, and universal broadband Internet.
“The solutions to these problems are multipronged,” Dr. Issaka said. “Some will happen locally; for instance, well-executed planning around telehealth. Some will happen at the state level through opportunities like advocacy or even just reaching out to your own [congressional representative]. And then some will also happen programmatically – How can we as a health system begin to leverage something like mailed FIT?”
Finally, Dr. Issaka suggested that tools from another branch of science can help improve screening rates.
“We don’t, in medicine, tap into the benefits of behavioral psychology enough,” she said. “That’s a great discipline with really great tools that we can all use.”
Dr. Issaka described the power of community, in that people are more likely to undergo screening if they know how many others in their community are also being screened.
“I think as much as we can gather those kinds of data and share those with individuals to provide reassurance about the safety and importance of screening, I think [that] will help,” she said.
The AGA FORWARD program is funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (DK118761). Dr. Issaka has no conflicts of interest.
SOURCES: Issaka. AGA FORWARD Program Webinar. 2020 Aug 27; Balzora et al. Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. 2020 June 20. doi: 10.1016/j.gie.2020.06.042; Tapper et al. Journal of Hepatology. 2020 Apr 13. doi: 10.1016/j.jhep.2020.04.005.