Sudbury woman waited a year for a biopsy due to COVID-19

The day after Mélodie Cyr found out she needed a biopsy on a nodule in her thyroid, she learned the procedure was not considered urgent and had been cancelled.

She got the news in the spring of 2020. She finally underwent an biopsy in April 2021.

"Since we didn't know what type of cancer, or if I did have cancer, it was just a very, very stressful time," she said about that year.

Cyr lived in Brantford, Ont., when doctors told her she needed a biopsy. She moved to Sudbury a month later and was followed by a local surgeon.

It turned out the growth in her thyroid was a pre-cancerous nodule. A month after her biopsy, Cyr had the tumour removed at Sudbury's Health Sciences North.

Cyr said her voice is still recovering, but possible signs of cancer remain on the other side of her thyroid, something her doctor is monitoring.

The conditions that delayed Cyr's biopsy early in the pandemic have returned with the advent of the COVID-19 Omicron variant.

On Jan. 5, the province ordered hospitals across Ontario to stop all non-urgent surgeries and procedures to preserve critical-care capacity and human resources.

As of Wednesday, Health Sciences North had 32 patients with COVID-19, with three of them in the intensive care unit (ICU). A further seven patients were considered past-positives – they had COVID-19 and are no longer positive – and 23 patients were under investigation for COVID-19.

Cyr said COVID-19's impact on the hospital system has taken a toll on herself and other patients. 

"Cancer services are being completely ignored due to the pandemic," she said.

"And people who do have cancer are immunocompromised, which makes them even at a greater risk of contracting the virus and dying."

Fewer cancer screenings in 2020

Through a freedom of information request, the Canadian Cancer Society discovered Ontario had roughly 40 per cent fewer cancer screenings in 2020, compared to the previous year.

The organization found 43 per cent fewer mammograms were completed in 2020 compared to 2019. There were also 43 per cent fewer fecal immunochemical (FIT) tests performed in 2020, compared to the previous year, and 40 per cent fewer Pap tests. 

"The real challenge is that cancer doesn't stop being a life changing and life threatening disease in the middle of a global health pandemic," said Stephen Piazza, the Canadian Cancer Society's director of advocacy. 

Piazza said his organization is concerned future cancers will be discovered at later stages than they would have been prior to the pandemic.

"If a cancer is caught early, then the prognosis for treatment is generally much better."

But as hospitals are overrun with COVID-19 cases, and reports of staffing shortages across the health-care sector increase, Piazza said there are no easy answers.

A return to normal screening volumes

In an email, Health Sciences North spokesperson Jason Turnbull said that while cancer screenings were impacted early in the pandemic, the hospital made up some ground in the later months.

Turnbull said lung cancer screenings returned to 100 per cent by July 2020, while the Northeast Ontario Breast Screening Program sites were functioning at 100 per cent by September 2021 and peaked at 134 per cent of normal volumes in November.

"These higher volumes in the fall of 2021 helped to address the breast screening backlog," the email said.

Colorectal cancer screening across northeastern Ontario returned to pre-pandemic levels by February 2021, the email said, and exceeded those levels by May that year.

Cervical cancer screening started to recover in September 2021, but Pap test volumes have remained below historic levels.  

"Access to cancer diagnostic services and cancer treatment through surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy has continued to be a high priority for all northeast hospitals and Health Sciences North throughout the pandemic, which is why these services continued throughout the pandemic," Turnbull said in the email.