The impact and collateral damage of COVID-19 on prostate MRI and guided biopsy operations: Society of Abdominal Radiology Prostate Cancer Disease-Focused Panel survey analysis

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has significantly affected health care systems throughout the world. A Qualtrics survey was targeted for radiologists around the world to study its effect on the operations of prostate MRI studies and biopsies. Descriptive statistics were reported. A total of 60 complete responses from five continents were included in the analysis. 70% of the responses were from academic institutions. Among all participants, the median (range) number of prostate MRI was 20 (0, 135) per week before the COVID-19 pandemic versus 10 (0, 30) during the lockdown period; the median (range) number of prostate biopsies was 4.5 (0, 60) per week before the COVID-19 versus 0 (0, 12) during the lockdown period. Among the 30% who used bowel preparation for their patients prior to MRI routinely, 11% stopped the bowel preparation due to the pandemic. 47% reported that their radiology departments faced staff disruptions, while 68% reported changes in clinic schedules in other clinical departments, particularly urology, genitourinary medical oncology, and radiation oncology. Finally, COVID-19 pandemic was found to disrupt not only the clinical prostate MRI operations but also impacted prostate MRI/biopsy research in up to 50% of institutions. The impact of this collateral damage in delaying diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer is yet to be explored.