Abstract

Breast cancer is a leading cause of cancer mortality among women second only to lung carcinoma. There has been substantial progress over the years and decline in mortality is due to early diagnosis and intervention. Growing knowledge regarding breast carcinoma biology has had a greater impact on its management. SARS CoV-2 COVID-19 outbreak had a significant effect on the existing health care services. This pandemic posed multiple challenges in care and management of non-COVID diseases including breast cancer management. Methods: The present study is retrospective data analysis of patients suffering from carcinoma breast reporting to the Government Medical College and Hospital, Jammu from March 2020 to August 2022 and type of management offered to them. This was compared with data from January 2018 to December 2019. 372 patients in the age group of 20-80 years of either sex reported in 2020-2022 and 710 patients in the age group of 20-80 years of either sex reported during 2018-2019. Result: During 2020-2022, most of the patients (n= 346) presented with advanced breast cancer and underwent neo-adjuvant therapy. 26 patients underwent modified radical mastectomy followed by adjuvant chemotherapy. 157 patients were lost to follow up. As against the previous years where the number of patients who underwent modified radical mastectomy were n= 67(2018), n= 73(2019) and number of patients who underwent neoadjuvant therapy were n= 253 (2018) and n= 317 (2019). Conclusion: Due to COVID – 19 pandemic, there was drastic decrease in carcinoma breast patients reporting to tertiary health care centre. Whosoever reported were in advanced stage of the disease leading to poor prognosis. Furthermore, large number of patients were lost to follow up. Healthcare policy needs to be redefined for non-COVID surgical diseases management including cancer patients