Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has inevitably caused those involved in cancer care to change clinical practice in order to minimize the risk of infection while maintaining cancer treatment as a priority. General advice during the pandemic suggests that most patients continue with ongoing therapies or planned surgeries, while follow-up visits may instead be delayed until the resolution of the outbreak. We conducted a literature search using PubMed to identify articles published in English language that reported on care recommendations for cancer patients during the COVID-19 pandemic from its inception up to 1st June 2020, using the terms “(cancer or tumor) AND (COVID 19)”. Articles were selected for relevance and split into five categories: (1) personal recommendations of single or multiple authors, (2) recommendations of single authoritative centers, (3) recommendations of panels of experts or of multiple regional comprehensive centers, (4) recommendations of multicenter cooperative groups, (5) official guidelines or recommendations of health authorities. Of the 97 included studies, 10 were personal recommendations of single or multiple independent authors, 16 were practice recommendations of single authoritative cancer centers, 35 were recommendations provided by panel of experts or of multiple regional comprehensive centers, 19 were cooperative group position papers, and finally, 17 were official guidelines statements. The COVID-19 pandemic is a global emergency, and has rapidly modified our clinical practice. Delaying unnecessary treatment, minimizing toxicity, and identifying care priorities for surgery, radiotherapy, and systemic therapies must be viewed as basic priorities in the COVID-19 era.
Highlights
Since the first report and identification of the responsible agent, the disease associated with the novel beta-coronavirus SARS-CoV2 (COVID-19) has spread globally, with an estimated 3.5 million cases and more than 20,000 deaths by end of April 2020
In a pandemic phase with reduced availability of intensive/subintensive care beds, treatment strategies may prioritize medical treatment aimed at downstaging the disease until the peak of the pandemic has disappeared and the number of intensive care unit beds has increased. This approach is recommended in the treatment of ovarian cancer, where first-step surgery is preferred, especially in the case of otherwise healthy patients
We conducted a literature search using PubMed to identify articles published in English language that reported on cancer patient care recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic from inception up to 1st June 2020, using the terms “(cancer or tumor) AND (COVID-19)” (Table 1) [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97]
Summary
Since the first report and identification of the responsible agent, the disease associated with the novel beta-coronavirus SARS-CoV2 (COVID-19) has spread globally, with an estimated 3.5 million cases and more than 20,000 deaths by end of April 2020. Healthcare professionals have suddenly seen the dawn of a completely new disease. COVID-19 has promptly been understood to be a “systemic disease” rather than a mere interstitial pneumonia. Managing such a new clinical condition involves the challenge of dealing with both a lack of evidence and a lack of experience. Professionals from all specialties have suddenly found themselves being forced to become respiratory physicians, infectious disease specialists, and anesthetists; in this framework, the lack of knowledge in biology, epidemiology, pathophysiology, immune response, and treatment has highlighted the unmet need for uniformity and systematic review of current evidence
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