Edited by: Maria Rosaria De Miglio, University of Sassari, Italy
Reviewed by: Sarah Lewis, The University of Sydney, Australia; Claudia Mello-Thoms, The University of Iowa, United States
*Correspondence: Guang-Xun Lin,
†These authors have contributed equally to this work
‡These authors have contributed equally to this work as corresponding co-authors
This article was submitted to Breast Cancer, a section of the journal Frontiers in Oncology
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is disrupting routine medical care of cancer patients, including those who have cancer or are undergoing cancer screening. In this study, breast cancer management during the COVID-19 pandemic (BCMP) is reviewed, and the research trends of BCMP are evaluated by quantitative and qualitative evaluation.
In this study, published studies relating to BCMP from 1 January 2020 to 1 April 2022 were searched from the Web of Science database (WoS). Bibliometric indicators consisted of publications, research hotspots, keywords, authors, journals, institutions, nations, and h-index.
A total of 182 articles investigating BCMP were searched. The United States of America and the University of Rome Tor Vergata were the nation and the institution with the most publications on BCMP. The first three periodicals with leading published BCMP studies were
BCMP has received attention from scholars in many nations over the last 3 years. This study revealed significant contributions to BCMP research by nations, institutions, scholars, and journals. The stratified clustering study provided the current status and future trends of BCMP to help physicians with the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer through the pandemic, and provide a reference for in-depth clinical studies on BCMP.
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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, has significantly affected >220 million individuals worldwide (
This study was not approved by an institutional committee since the relevant public data were retrospectively reviewed. Articles were searched from the Web of Science (WoS) database. The literature between 1 January 2020 and 30 April 2022 was reviewed. The time frame of the study was from the outbreak of the COVID-19 to the present. Search phrases included (TI=(“neoplasm of the breast” OR “breast neoplasm” OR “carcinoma breast” OR “carcinoma of the breast” OR “breast cancer” OR “cancer of the breast” OR “breast cancer”)) AND TI=(“SARS-COV2” OR “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2” OR “SARS coronavirus 2” OR “2019 novel coronavirus” OR 2019-nCoV OR SARS-CoV-2 OR “coronavirus disease 2019” OR “coronavirus 2019” OR “COVID 19”) AND PY= (2012–2021)) AND DT=(Article)). Original articles were only incorporated; letters, editorial material, and reviews were excluded. A total of 182 articles were correlated with our topics. Two researchers verified that these publications matched the themes of this study. Any differences of opinion were discussed until a consensus was reached.
CiteSpace, R language, and VOSviewer were utilized for creating data tables and visual knowledge graphs. CiteSpace is largely based on co-citation analysis and pathfinder network scaling to investigate the articles on a particular subject, which allows users to find the vital development and knowledge turning point in the discipline history (
Bibliographic Item Co-Occurrence Matrix Builder (BICOMB) is available freely online (
After screening, 182 articles on the topic of BCMP during the COVID-19 pandemic were acquired from the WOS database in less than 3 years, particularly in 2021 with 104 articles accounting for 57.1% of the total literature, thus significantly contributing to this study.
A total of 60 nations contributed to breast cancer management during the COVID-19 pandemic in the study period. The United States of America had the largest number of articles (54 of 182 [29.67%]), followed by Italy (34 articles [18.68%]), P.R. China (17 articles [9.34%]), Turkey (14 articles [7.69%]), and England (13 articles [7.14%]) (
The top five countries that contributed to research publications in the field.
The country collaborative map in the field of BCMP.
The most relevant affiliations linked to articles of BCMP (top 20).
The map of the institution’s collaborative network.
Articles regarding BCMP were published in 101 science journals. The top five journals consisted of
The top five journals in number of articles published.
Buonomo OC was the most prolific author in this field, publishing nine articles (9/182, 4.94%), followed by Vanni G, Matarazzo M, and Pellicciaro M, who published eight articles (4.40%) and were cited over 30 times. Interestingly, all of them achieved the same h-index (h-index = 6) and came from the same institution (University of Rome Tor Vergata) and nation (Italy). The top 10 authors have a steady output and total citation in the 2 years. A list of the top authors’ productions over time is shown in
The top author’s production over time.
The top 10 papers have been cited 465 times (
With the use of high-frequency keywords to identify the hotspots of research, these and other vital issues can be effectively determined. A total of 380 keywords were extracted based on BICOMB from the 182 publications. The frequency of 2 was defined as high-frequency keywords, and 60 keyword matrixes were classified. The 10 most frequent keywords consisted of COVID-19, breast cancer, quality of life, women, impact, therapy, diagnosis, survival, health, and surgery. The keywords co-occurrence map shows that larger nodes had larger keyword weights, and the linkage of keywords represents simultaneous appearance in one document (
The co-occurrence map of keywords.
The thematic map of keywords plus.
Subsequently, similar categories of keywords are assigned to the same cluster using gCLUTO for biclustering analysis. The above clusters revealed the vital research field and critical research content. The substantial number represents the cluster number within the visualized mountain map (
The visualized mountain map of the keywords: Cluster 0: Screening for breast cancer patients during the pandemic; Cluster 1: Breast cancer surgery in the pandemic; Cluster 2: Recovery of breast cancer patients during the pandemic; Cluster 3: Motion impact of the outbreak on breast cancer patients; Cluster 4: Diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer patients during the pandemic; Cluster 5: Clinical vaccine management of breast cancer patients during a pandemic.
The visualized heat map linked to data matrix.
Cluster 0: Screening for breast cancer patients in the pandemic
Cluster 1: Breast cancer surgery in the pandemic
Cluster 2: Recovery of breast cancer patients in the pandemic
Cluster 3: Emotion effect of the outbreak on breast cancer patients
Cluster 4: Diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer patients in the pandemic
Cluster 5: Clinical vaccination management for breast cancer patients during the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused major disruption to healthcare systems and professionals around the globe (
The BCMP publications between 2020 and 2022 were investigated with the use of information visualization methods. A total of 421 BCMP-related articles were identified. Furthermore, 182 original articles were finally studied by de-duplicating verification, excluding reviews, conference articles, and letters.
The highest number of articles was from the United States of America. Although Italy has not published the most articles, it achieved the largest h-index. The reason may be that the pandemic situation in Italy was serious in the early stage of the pandemic, and more scholars have studied this field. University of Rome Tor Vergata published 30 papers, and Huazhong Universality of Science Technology published 20 articles. There is a certain amount of cooperation between the above nations or institutions. This analysis revealed that a considerable number of scholars and institutions have been concerned with BCMP over the past 3 years and explored corresponding solutions.
During the pandemic, doctors may be more concerned about breast cancer diagnosis, treatment, and quality of life. Since the pandemic can lead to quarantines and lockdowns, the above can cause delays in breast cancer-related diagnosis and treatment (
We analyzed the development direction of BCMP through the thematic map, which was derived from keywords plus, thus providing a more comprehensive view of trends in the field. The mainstream themes include chemotherapy, neoadjuvant therapy, endocrine therapy, radiotherapy, breast-conserving surgery, and follow-up, which are likely to be further developed in the future as it has a high level of development and relevance.
Pandemic-associated deficits in the number of breast examinations have been declining with time. The interrupted time series investigation demonstrated smaller frequencies of breast biopsy, diagnostic mammography, as well as screening mammography after the outbreak (
Furthermore, there may be a viable approach (
Breast cancer surgery can be safely carried out and integrated with a stringent protocol for reducing COVID-19 exposure and transmission, despite the pressures associated with the COVID-19 pandemic (
A paper suggested that the treatment of ACEIs (angiotensin-converting enzyme ACE inhibitors) in Luminal A breast cancer might facilitate tumor progression (
Moreover, Mella-Abarca suggested that telerehabilitation may take on a great significance in people with breast cancer during the pandemic (
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Okechukwu et al. suggested that cancer patients should exercise at home on a tele-supervised home-based exercise oncology platform tailored by a physician and certified clinical exercise physiologist based on their preferences, contraindications, exercise tolerance, current clinical status, medical history, and cardiorespiratory fitness/functional capacity, instead of exercising within an indoor public fitness facility or outdoor spaces to curb the risk of COVID-19 infection and cardiovascular events (
During the pandemic, many breast cancer patients experienced many stressors related to more significant anxiety, depression, fear of cancer recurrence (FCR), and insomnia (
Some physicians suggested classifying people at risk of breast cancer and trying to diagnose them as early as possible, while those at low risk should be observed and followed up at home (
Endocrine treatments [tamoxifen, aromatase inhibitors, and luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) agonist] were continued during the COVID-19 pandemic since they do not affect the immune system (
Vaccination is an essential step in the fight against this devastating pandemic and is relatively safe for breast cancer patients. Can people using CDK 4/6 inhibitors be vaccinated, and what is the effect? The answer is that vaccination is available. Patients with breast cancer who underwent the treatment of CDK4/6 inhibitors developed SARS-CoV-2 NAbs in response to the first dose of COVID-19 vaccines, similar to the general population (
Although bibliometric analysis and visualization methods were initially employed for the evaluation of the quality and quantity of research BCMP in this study, it also had some limitations. First, the bibliometric analysis only included a single database for search. Second, we only searched the titles, and there may be distribution articles missing. Third, burst keywords analysis cannot be performed due to the publication of the literature from 1 January 2020 to 1 April 2022. Despite the above limitations, our analysis can provide a reference for the research characteristics of BCMP.
Bibliometric techniques were employed for examining publications, research hotspots, and trends in breast cancer management during the pandemic. The findings of this study reveal that the United States of America, Italy, and China have made substantial contributions to the number of publications, institutions, magazines, and citations, which has facilitated the development of BCMP. The Buonomo-centered team, University of Rome Tor Vergata, and the
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/
Writing original draft: P-fL, J-tL, and TD. Validation: J-tL and TD. Investigation: P-mF and G-XL. Methodology: J-tL and TD. Software: P-fL. Supervision: X-CC. Project administration: P-fL. Data interpretation: Ping-ming Fan. Review and editing: G-XL, X-CC, and P-mF. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
The author G-XL wishes to acknowledge the financial support of the “Xiamen Health High-Level Talent Training Program”.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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