Discordance of COVID-19 guidelines for patients with cancer: A systematic review

Pankaj Kumar Garg; Pallvi Kaul; Deepti Choudhary; Kiran Kalyan Turaga; Mahendra Pal Singh; Ajeet Ramamani Tiwari; Vipin Arora; Nishant Agrawal; Beat Rau; Sai Yendamuri

doi:10.1002/jso.26110

Discordance of COVID-19 guidelines for patients with cancer: A systematic review

J Surg Oncol. 2020 Sep;122(4):579-593. doi: 10.1002/jso.26110. Epub 2020 Jul 15.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Surgical Oncology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India.
² Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India.
³ Section of Surgery and Surgical Oncology, Department of Surgery, The University of Chicago Medicine, Chicago, Illinois.
⁴ Department of ENT and Head Neck Surgery, University College of Medical Sciences and Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, University of Delhi, Delhi, India.
⁵ Section of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Department of Surgery, The University of Chicago Medicine, Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
⁶ Department of Surgery, Campus Virchow-Klinikum, Charité-Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany.
⁷ Department of Thoracic Surgery, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York.

Abstract

This review was aimed to systematically evaluate the available literature on the impact of COVID-19 on cancer care and to critically analyze the diagnostic and therapeutic strategies suggested by various healthcare providers, societies, and institutions. Majority guidelines for various types of cancers favored a delay in treatment or a nonsurgical approach wherever feasible. These guidelines are based on a low level of evidence and have significant discordance for the role and timing of surgery, especially in early tumors.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; cancer; coronavirus; pandemic.

Publication types

Review