The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the restructuring of healthcare delivery. There have been delays in fighting against leading problems such as cancer in this process. Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common cancer among urological malignancies. We aim to evaluate the differences between patient populations diagnosed with PCa before and during the pandemic and underwent radical prostatectomy (RP) as a treatment. The study was designed retrospectively in a single center. The pathologic, clinic and demographic of patients who underwent RP between 11.03.2020, which is the first date of the pandemic in Turkey, and 31.12.2020 and between 11.03.2019 and 31.12.2019 were compared. 327 patients were appropriate for inclusion criteria. 125 of them were operated during the pandemic and 202 of them before the pandemic. The median between prostate biopsy and RP was 82 days before the pandemic and 97 days during the pandemic (p=0.04). Although there was a significantly longer time between biopsy and RP during the pandemic, gleason score upgrading, upstaging, biochemical recurrence and lymph node involvement were not found significantly different. Additionally, in groups made by the D'amico risk classification, no significant difference was found between the two periods in Gleason Score Upgrading and Upstaging. The deferrability of malignancy treatment is an important problem for the health system due to the high number of oncology patients. The current pandemic has increased the importance of patient selection to minimize the harmful effects of deferred operations. This study showed that the delay of surgery does not affect the oncologic results for PCa.
Key words: Prostate carcinoma, surgical delay, COVID-19 pandemic
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