Generation challenge in the post-covid period

Our study reflects on the social change that has began in the world in late autumn 2019. The Covid-pandemic is an exogenous shock (Illés et al. 2020), an asteroid effect that fundamentally changed normality in the Western world. In our theoretical paper, we argue that generation as a central theoretical and analytical category of Karl Mannheim and the neo-Mannheimian literature, is well suited to describe young people’s changing cultural trends of the post-Covid period. In this context, we believe that the new, historical generation in the Mannheimian sense (Szabó 2020a, Szabó 2020b) can be best understood in terms of cultural value changes. We also examine forms of ’approaching’ and ’assiminilating’ cultural based on age-specific characteristics. © 2021, Hungarian Sociological Association. All rights reserved.

The management of advanced rectal cancer during COVID 19 pandemics. Experience report of a tertiary surgical unit

Objective. The access to surgical care has been limited throughout the world due to COVID-19 pandemics. This article aims to study the outcomes in locally advanced rectal cancer in our department, as a result of COVID-19 pandemics restrictions. Materials and methods. We included in the current study all patients who underwent surgery for locally-advanced rectal cancer in our department in 2019 (n=32, Group 1). We compared these patients with the patients operated after the resolution of the COVID-19 restrictions in 2020 (n=16, Group 2). All patients underwent long-course neo-adjuvant chemoradiotherapy. Results. The mean age of the patients was 64.5 years in Group 1 vs 65 years in Group 2 (p=0.99). In Group 1, the majority of the patients were clinically staged as cT3 (68.7%), similar to Group 2 (cT3 stage - 87.5%). The median time between neo-adjuvant treatment and the surgery was 8.4 weeks in Group 1 vs 11.1 weeks in Group 2 (p=0.009). During neoadjuvant treatment, none of the patients in Group 2 were diagnosed with SARS-COV2 infection and none of the surgeries were delayed due to the viral infection. There were no significant differences between the two groups in terms of pathologic staging (p=0.77), but complete pathologic response rate was higher in Group 2 as compared to Group 1 (25% vs. 12%). Conclusion. Neo-adjuvant long-course chemotherapy is a safe treatment option for patients with locally-advanced rectal cancer even during the COVID-19. Increased time to surgery leads to a higher rate of complete pathologic response, but further studies are needed to assess long-term impact of this outcome.