Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2024. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Methodol. Jun 20, 2024; 14(2): 92612
Published online Jun 20, 2024. doi: 10.5662/wjm.v14.i2.92612
Digestive and breast cancer patients managed during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic: Short and middle term outcomes
Jacobo Trébol, Ana Carabias-Orgaz, María Carmen Esteban-Velasco, Asunción García-Plaza, Juan Ignacio González-Muñoz, Ana Belén Sánchez-Casado, Felipe Carlos Parreño-Manchado, Marta Eguía-Larrea, José Antonio Alcázar-Montero
Jacobo Trébol, María Carmen Esteban-Velasco, Asunción García-Plaza, Juan Ignacio González-Muñoz, Ana Belén Sánchez-Casado, Felipe Carlos Parreño-Manchado, Marta Eguía-Larrea, José Antonio Alcázar-Montero, Cirugía General y del Aparato Digestivo, Complejo Asistencial Universitario de Salamanca, Salamanca 37007, Salamanca, Spain
Jacobo Trébol, María Carmen Esteban-Velasco, Juan Ignacio González-Muñoz, Felipe Carlos Parreño-Manchado, Marta Eguía-Larrea, José Antonio Alcázar-Montero, Cirugía, Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca 37007, Salamanca, Spain
Ana Carabias-Orgaz, Oftalmología, Complejo Asistencial Universitario de Salamanca, Salamanca 37007, Salamanca, Spain
Author contributions: Trebol J performed data collection and literature review; Trébol J and Carabias A wrote the paper; Carabias A revised language editing; all members of General Surgery Department managed the patients, organized surgical management, and obtained informed consent; all authors equally contributed to this paper with drafting and critical revision; all authors reviewed the paper and gave their final approval of manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: Research protocol was approved by Salamanca Healthcare Area Ethical Review Board (code 2020 04 479).
Clinical trial registration statement: The study is not a clinical trial so it has not been registered as a clinical study. Is a prospective study without an intervention.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed verbal or written consent prior to study enrollment. Due to contagion risks and the current policy of minimizing personal contacts and physical documentation those days, an exception was included and approved by our Ethical Review Board to obtain written consent for some patients.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors indicated no potential conflicts of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available. The presented data are anonymized and risk of identification nearly null.
CONSORT 2010 statement: The authors have read the CONSORT 2010 statement, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CONSORT 2010 statement.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Jacobo Trébol, MD, PhD, Reader (Associate Professor), Surgeon, Surgical Oncologist, Cirugía General y del Aparato Digestivo, Complejo Asistencial Universitario de Salamanca, Paseo de la Transición Española S/N, Salamanca 37007, Salamanca, Spain. jacobotrebol@gmail.com
Received: January 31, 2024
Revised: April 29, 2024
Accepted: May 23, 2024
Published online: June 20, 2024
Processing time: 134 Days and 11.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: In our department, during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) first wave, all surgery was discontinued and resumed later for cancer patients. To minimise perioperative severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections, we established a physically separated clean pathway and adopted some practice modifications. We evaluated 96 malignancies; 88 underwent surgery (one SARS-CoV-2 positive): 49 colorectal, 20 breast, 12 liver-pancreatic and 7 oesophago-gastric. Three never received surgery because they contracted COVID-19. 78.2% were treated in alternative buildings, 43.8% waited more than 4 wk, two additional stomas were constructed, and laparoscopy decreased. None contracted perioperative SARS-CoV-2. Clean pathways are essential to continue cancer surgery during pandemics. Despite practice changes, we obtained comparable to standard outcomes.