Report on lung cancer surgery during COVID-19 pandemic at a high volume US institution

The impact of COVID-19 has been felt in every field of medicine. We sought to understand how lung cancer surgery was affected at a high volume institution. We hypothesized that patients would wait longer for surgery, have more advanced tumors, and experience more complications during the COVID-19 cr...

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Published in:Journal of thoracic disease 2022-08, Vol.14 (8), p.2874-2879
Main Authors: Dolan, Daniel P, Lee, Daniel N, Polhemus, Emily, Kucukak, Suden, De León, Luis E, Wiener, Daniel, Jaklitsch, Michael T, Swanson, Scott J, White, Abby
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:The impact of COVID-19 has been felt in every field of medicine. We sought to understand how lung cancer surgery was affected at a high volume institution. We hypothesized that patients would wait longer for surgery, have more advanced tumors, and experience more complications during the COVID-19 crisis. A retrospective review was conducted, comparing pathologically confirmed non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) surgical cases performed in 2019 to cases performed from March to May 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 crisis. Clinical and pathologic stage, tumor size, time to surgery, follow up time, and complications were evaluated. A total of 375 cases were performed in 2019 58 cases in March to May 2020. Overall, there were no differences in the distribution of clinical stages or in the distribution of median wait times to surgery between groups (COVID-19 16.5 days pre-COVID-19 17 days, P=0.54), nor were there differences when subdivided into Stage I-II and Stage III-IV. Case volume was lowest in April 2020 with 6 cases 37 in April 2019, P
ISSN:2072-1439
2077-6624
DOI:10.21037/jtd-22-5