Mortality trends for colorectal cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US

It can be assumed that a reduction in patient access to colorectal cancer screening and early management during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic could have generated a negative impact on subsequent diagnoses and survival probabilities. We report here the recent statistics on colorectal cancer-related deaths in the US. We searched the CDC online database WONDER database, which reports mortality data for the entire country, using specific ICD-10 codes for colorectal cancer (from C18 to C20). The age-adjusted death rate ×100,000 for colorectal cancer displayed a gradual decrease from 2018 (13.06) to 2019 (12.76) and 2020 (12.55), but then reversed in 2021, when the age-adjusted death rate increased to 12.94, decreasing to 12.58 in 2022 and increasing again to 12.75 in 2023. The results of our analysis suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has likely had a negative impact on early mortality from colorectal cancer, as shown by the significant increase in the age-adjusted death rate recorded in 2021.