P. K (Kochi/Cochin, India)

Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences

Author Of 1 Presentation

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154P - Impact Of Covid-19 On Diagnosis And Surgical Care Of Patients With Breast Cancer.

Abstract

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic took the attention of people in India when the first case was reported on January 30, 2020 and that was from Kerala. On March 21, 2020 lockdown was implemented throughout the country. When the pandemic accelerated, the routine health care system around the state was interrupted. The main aim of our study was to evaluate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on diagnosis and surgical care for patients with breast cancer in our institution.

Methods

This single-centre retrospective study was conducted to evaluate the effect of COVID-19 on the diagnosis and surgical care for patients with breast cancer before and after the pandemic. The data was collected from the electronic medical records of the hospital from March 2020- December 2020 and was compared with the data in the pre-pandemic time i.e., from March 2019- December 2019.

Results

2019 2020 P Value
Mean age 54.96+/-13.065 53.20+/-11.944 0.261
Total mammograms 3689 1901
Total core biopsy 391 367
New patients 614 354
Total number of surgeries 318 287
Total no of bcs 127 93 .015 (statistically significant)
Duration of symptoms (weeks) 20+/-56.38 15+/-24.3 0.188
Time taken for treatment (days) 25.05+/-52.12 days 31.52 +/- 44.44 days .306
Average tumour size 2.92+/-1.65 cm 2.91+/-1.31cm .963
Advanced stage *size > 5 cm *nact 23 24 25 37 .762
Duration of hospital stay 3.84+/- 1.485 days 3.97+/- 1.536 days .306
Total patients with complications 113 83
No of patients with post op infection 39 25 .186
Apart from the above-mentioned results 3 patients tested positive for COVID-19 infection during the pre-surgical evaluation. As per protocol the patients were isolated and after they tested negative, they were taken up for surgery. After hospital discharge, none of these patients had any post-operative complications. No COVID-19 infection was detected among patients or health care workers.

Conclusions

The decrease in the number of new patients along with number of mammograms shows that there was a fall in number of patients visiting the hospital but core biopsy number and total number of surgeries being almost the same in both phases (mild decrease due to 1 month of total lockdown in April 2020) implies that the annual and routine check-ups might have been affected by the pandemic but those coming with suspicious masses which required a biopsy and surgery remained the same. This study shows that that there was no significant difference in the surgical care for patient with breast cancer before and after COVID-19. With proper clinical triaging and universal screening, continuation of cancer care is possible even during this pandemic.

Legal entity responsible for the study

The authors.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.

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