Introduction/Background Cervical cancer screening in England was one of five national screening programmes that were temporarily suspended during the COVID 19 pandemic due to the unprecedented demands on the medical services. Between April and August 2020, screening invitations stopped going out and General practitioners discontinued face to face consultations which led to a fall in two-week wait referrals for suspected cancers. We reviewed the referrals to the colposcopy clinic and cervical cancer diagnosis at Royal London Hospital during the COVID 19 pandemic.

Methodology The study was a Retrospective cohort study of women diagnosed with cervical cancer between May 2020 and April 2021 at the Royal London Hospital, a tertiary Gynae-oncology centre covering North and East London.

Results There were 1,500 colposcopy clinic referrals in this period which was a 37.3% reduction from the previous year. Of these, 14 cervical cancer cases were diagnosed which was an increase of 180% from the previous year (when 5 cases were diagnosed). See figure 1 below. Six out of the 14 new cases (42.8%) were late-stage presentation- at least stage 2B of the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) 2018 staging of cervical cancer.

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Abstract 2022-RA-1070-ESGO Figure 1

Conclusion The fall in colposcopy clinic referral can be explained by the disruptions from the COVID 19 pandemic as cervical screening invitations reduced during this time. However, the accompanying surge in cervical cancer diagnosis was unexpected. Further research is needed to compare with data from other gynaecology oncology centres and the Cancer research UK for the period of the COVID 19 pandemic when this is available.