Trends in Colorectal Surgery During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Ever since its widespread outbreak, the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged health care systems worldwide. Allocation of resources in an effort to contain the spread of the virus, along with the reluctance of many patients to seek health care because of restrictions and social isolation, have severely disrupted preventive screenings and cancer care worldwide. Beds were needed for critically ill patients with COVID-19, and staff were required to care for those patients. Therefore, a resource transfer led to a prohibition on elective surgery for varying lengths of time in every state in the US and elsewhere in the world, generally between March and May 2020. There have been numerous publications in the past 2 years reporting the association of the COVID-19 pandemic with the diagnosis and treatment of colon and rectal cancer.We read with great interest the comprehensive work by Eklöv et al 1 in which they retrospectively reviewed 1140 patients who received a diagnosis of colorectal cancer and were treated in 8 hospitals in the greater Stockholm region, the area in Sweden most affected by COVID-19. The authors compared 550 patients with colorectal cancer treated between March and August 2020 with a control group of 590 patients treated between March and August 2019. 1 The authors reported that more patients during the pandemic presented with advanced stage cancers, mostly a higher proportion of T4 tumors, compared with the control patients in 2019. This finding is + Related articleAuthor affiliations and article information are listed at the end of this article.

Analysis of the Clinical Incidence and Correlation between Colorectal Cancer and Microorganisms

“…The pandemic altered the allocation of resources towards treating the SARS-COV-2 pandemic displayed a greater influx of SARS-COV-2 related microbiology orders. Even so, this population pool did not display an overall decrease in diagnosis of CRC during the pandemic when compared to the years prior as originally anticipated (Freund & Wexner, 2022). Well to moderately differentiated is categorized under moderately differentiated The cases that tested positive for E. faecalis one of the adenocarcinomas is noted to have neuroendocrine differentiation * Indicates one patient tested positive for these microorganisms and this result was not shared by any other patients.…”

Clinicopathological Analysis of Complicated Colorectal Cancer: A Five-Year Retrospective Study from a Single Surgery Unit

“…The study included the year 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was declared; in this regard, several studies have reported that during the initial phase of the pandemic, there was a significant decline in both the total number of surgical interventions and the number of surgeries conducted for colorectal cancer [ 35 ]. In contrast to those findings, which have shown a notable reduction in the management of cancer patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts were made in our unit to maintain the same level of surgical care for colorectal cancer patients during that period of time.…”

The Challenges of Colorectal Cancer Surgery during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Romania: A Three-Year Retrospective Study

“…These circumstances occurred because national recommendations issued during the COVID-19 pandemic made it clear that non-emergent surgical circumstances should be postponed until a negative PCR test from the patient is received. Other studies, however, reported that both the overall number of surgical interventions and the colorectal cancer surgeries decreased significantly, at least in the initial phase of the pandemic [ 31 ]…”