Influence of Covid-19 Pandemic on the Incidence of Complications in Colon Cancer Surgery

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 (A82;B90) were analyzed, all of them had a negative preoperative PCR-COVID- test. Men124(72.1%). Age 72+/-10.1years. LOS 7(IQR5-12days). 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.