PANDEMIC
Cancer Care During a Pandemic
By Madiha Kabeer, Biochemistry Major, 2022
I
ndividuals all around the world with underlying health conditions have been deeply affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. People with preexisting critical illnesses and newly acquired conditions face many complications during treatment. Patients may face loneliness, delayed treatment, and difficulty in accessing healthcare. Cancer impacts a person’s life immensely regardless of the circumstances, and the pandemic has only created more hardships. During the pandemic, many wards in healthcare sites were converted into intensive care units for COVID-19 patients. Some of these sites include cancer care wards, which faced decreased amounts of medical supplies, ventilators, pharmaceuticals, and beds allocated for cancer patients. In fact, COVID-19 patients are prioritized in healthcare facilities, leading to delays in cancer treatment. This makes it difficult for cancer patients to access the care and treatment they need.1
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Figure 1: Photo courtesy of Genentech.5
Delayed treatment can lead to complications for cancer patients as those who received treatment later than usual showed a decreased survival rate. The disease may spread to other areas of the body, tumors may not be removable, and chemotherapy may not be as effective. Depending on the severity of the malignancy, necessary procedures should not be avoided or delayed due to pandemic circumstances.2 Although treatment should not be delayed, the high risk of COVID-19 exposure in healthcare sites must be considered against the need for treatment.1 Cancer patients who contracted COVID-19 within 30 days of receiving chemotherapy showed an increased risk of death.3 Overall, there was an increased risk of death by 25% in these patients, putting cancer patients at the highest risk for fatality from COVID-19.4 Other treatments such as immunotherapy, surgery, and radiotherapy did not show an increased risk of death.3
