ABSTRACT
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was declared as pandemic by World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020. The outbreak has caused 5,232,562 deaths worldwide until December 3rd, 2021. Though primarily affecting the respiratory system, involvement of other organ systems have been reported in severe disease. Venous thromboembolism (VTE) has been recognized as an important complication. Previous studies have reported the prevalence of VTE in intensive care unit (ICU) patients between 7 and 85% and in non-ICU patients between 0 and 19%. COVID-19 patients that are at high risk for VTE are also at increased risk for bleeding. In such cases, anticoagulation may potentially be harmful. Thereby, it is important to understand the risk factors for VTE predisposition in the COVID-19 patients, timing of VTE, and the rate of occurrence of VTE in hospitalized patients post-discharge. Comparison of the rate of occurrence of VTE in COVID-19 patients with the non-COVID-19 patients with similar disease severity is required to truly interpret the reportedly high rates of VTE in COVID-19 patients. Several pathophysiological mechanisms have been reported for the development of VTE in COVID-19. Autopsy-based studies have contributed to the existing knowledge. d-dimer, presently, seems to be the most suitable investigation for risk-identification of VTE supported by Doppler studies and overall clinical context. Further, prospective studies and clinical trials are essentially required to fill the gaps in evidence for occurrence, risk prediction and management of VTE in COVID-19 patients.
ABSTRACT
Early detection of cancer greatly increases the chances of better survival. The emergence of COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted several essential health services globally and early detection of cancer services is one of them. The routine cancer screenings have plummeted in many developed countries since the crisis. India has highest estimated lip and oral cavity cancer cases worldwide (119,992, 33.8%) and the secondhighest number of breast (162,468, 17.8%) and cervix uteri (96,922,30.7%) cancers in Asian sub-continent. Not only India has high burden of cancer, but the majority (75-80%) of patients have advanced disease at the time of diagnosis. Hence is it imperative that early detection services should be kept functional at out-patient settings so that at least the patients coming to hospitals with early signs and symptoms can be diagnosed as early as possible. Strategies need to be adopted to continue early detection services and ensure safety of patients and health care workers from COVID-19 transmission.