Thoracic Surgical Oncology: Maintaining a High-Volume Surgical Program During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Thoracic surgical oncology is a time-sensitive, high-resource, complex surgical speciality to which coronavirus has posed a unique challenge. In response to the evolving situation in mainland Europe, our department rapidly established a coronavirus disease 2019–free site to maintain elective cancer surgery. This necessitated a strict admission pathway and perioperative patient management. It resulted in the maintenance of a high-volume, high-quality thoracic surgical oncology program with no coronavirus disease 2019–positive cases to date. Maintaining satisfactory training levels among surgical and anesthetic trainees has also been achieved. We suggest that this model could be adapted to local resource capabilities.