Erdinç Çetinkaya, Tezcan Akın, Fevziye Köse, Medine Çakıcı, İsmail Kasım, Sadettin Er
Journal of Comprehensive Surgery - 2025;3(4):64-67
Aims: Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains to be the third most common cancer and could be detected earlier with screening programmes. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has disrupted routine health care globally including CRC screening. In this study we aimed to assess and compare the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) scores in patients who were planned to undergo screening before and during COVID-19. Methods: In this cross sectional study we compared data of patients who were planned to undergo CRC screening during COVID-19 period (February 1 to February 28, 2021) with those of the same period of 2019 (pre-COVID-19). Groups were compared in terms of age, gender, education level, incidence of unwillingness and cancelling the colonoscopy for CRC and HADS scores. Results: The mean (+/-SD) age of the whole cohort was 51.1 (+/-12.45) years. Sixteen (28%) of the patients were unwilling to undergo screening and 3 (5.2%) of them cancelled the colonoscopy in COVID-19 period group, however none of the patients had an anxiety to undergo screening and cancelled colonoscopy in pre-COVID-19 group. The subscales of Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale; HADS-A and HADS-D scores were significantly higher in COVID-19 period group. Conclusion: CRC prevention efforts depend largely on screening. Therefore, the effectiveness of the screening method depends both on the test sensitivity, specificity and the patients' compliance. Due to the fear of patients' to be exposed to COVID-19, the rate of CRC screening has been decreased worldwide. Especially in the global health burden circumstances like COVID-19, less invasive, easily applicable and screening tests with high sensitivity and specifity could be the preferred option in order to improve patients' compliance.
