OBJECTIVES: To estimate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the diagnosis and treatment of ND in the Brazilian public health system (SUS).

METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted using data from DataSUS, a real-world claims database. A time-series analysis was conducted between 2018-2021 with the monthly number of ND-related procedures in SUS. The demand for such procedures was compared between the pre-pandemic (Jan/2018-March/2020) and pandemic periods (April/2020-Dec/2021). The Pearson’s coefficient was applied to assess the correlation between COVID-19 cases and number of ND-related procedures.

RESULTS: The average amount of procedures related to ND in the pre-pandemic period (22,050) had a huge drop in the beginning of the pandemic – in April/2020, one month after the first COVID-19 cases, only 9,845 procedures were performed, a 55.35% reduction. However, after the first months of the pandemic, we observed an increasing-trend in these numbers: in September/2020 (n=17,570), the procedures’ amount was close to the pre-pandemic values, being overcome in November/2020 (n=29,661). This period was also characterized by an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases, leading to a positive correlation between this and the ND-related procedures (r=0.2538). This was also observed during the following COVID-19 waves. The impact observed on the costs were similar to the pattern for procedures, they were lower as soon as the pandemic started, but were normalized in September on the same year.

CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic directly impacted the demand for ND-related procedures during the first months. However, these procedures had an increasing-trend in the following months, regardless of the increase of COVID-19 cases. A hypothesis is that the suppressed demand observed during the beginning of the pandemic is more related to quarantine adherence than public health system exhaustion due to the pandemic.