ABSTRACT
Aim: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most frequent pathologies worldwide with important complication rates. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, the number and stage of colon tumors have been affected. It's known that COVID+ patients undergoing surgery have a higher rate of complications. However, the existing literature that analyzes the incidence of complications in non-COVID patients with CRC undergoing elective surgery is scarce, thus we perform this review analyzing and presenting our results. Method(s): Retrospective study, we've included patients with colon cancer who underwent scheduled cancer surgery. Groups: Pre-COVID( A): July-2019 to February-2020 and Group-COVID( B): July-2020 to February-2021. Result(s): 172 patients (A:82;B:90) were analyzed, all of them had a negative preoperative PCR-COVID- test. Men:124(72.1%). Age: 72+/-10.1years. LOS: 7(IQR:5-12days). Laparoscopic approach: 142(82.6%). Overall complications: 40.7%. Infectious: 37.2%. SSI: 30.2%. 30-d readmission-rate: 3.5%. Dehiscence: 9.3%. Reintervention: 15.1%. COVID-group presented a greater number of patients with long stay ( > 7days): (62.2% vs. 46.3%;P = 0.03). Use of endoprostheses was higher in the COVID-group (11.1% vs. 2.4%;P = 0.026). In the bivariate analysis, we observed COVID-group presented a higher rate of overall-complications, infectious, SSI, dehiscence and reoperations (51.1% vs. 26.8% P = 0.001;48.9% vs. 24.4% P = 0.001;46.7% vs. 12.2% P = 0.001;15.5% vs. 2.4% P = 0.001;20% vs. 9.7% P = 0.017). No statistically significant differences were found in the 30-d readmission rate (Group A: 2.4%, group B: 4.4% P > 0.05). Conclusion(s): In our environment, during the COVID-19 Pandemic, patients with colon cancer who underwent scheduled cancer surgery, with a negative PCR-COVID test, had higher risk of presenting overall complications and reoperations and, therefore, a longer hospital stay.