Managing Prostate Cancer Surgical Patients during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Brief Report of the Duke Cancer Institute’s Initial Experience

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has rapidly placed tremendous stress on health systems around the world. In response, multiple health systems have postponed elective surgeries in order to conserve hospital beds and personal protective equipment, minimize patient traffic, and prevent unnecessary utilization and exposure of healthcare workers. The American College of Surgeons released the following statement on March 13, 2020: "Each hospital, health system and surgeon should thoughtfully review all scheduled elective procedures with a plan to minimize, postpone, or cancel electively scheduled operations, endoscopes, or other invasive procedures until we have passed the predicted inflection point in the exposure graph and can be confident that our health care infrastructure can support a potentially rapid and overwhelming uptick in critical patient care needs." In our state, North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper requested that all hospitals postpone elective and non-urgent procedures and surgeries effective March 23, 2020.