Managing Patients with Prostate Cancer During COVID-19 Pandemic: The Experience of a High-Volume Robotic Surgery Center.
J Endourol
; 35(3): 305-311, 2021 03.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-772743
ABSTRACT
Objectives:
To report our experience and lessons learned as high-volume center of robotic surgery managing patients with prostate cancer since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in our center. Materials andMethods:
We described some critical changes in our routine to minimize the COVID infection among patients and health care workers. From March 1 to May 25, 2020, we described our actions and surgical outcomes of patients treated in our center during the pandemic.Results:
Preventing hospital visits, we implemented some modifications in our office routine in terms of patient appointment, follow-up, and management of nonsurgical candidates. In this period, 147 patients underwent robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) without intraoperative complications. The median operative time and blood loss were 91 minutes (interquartile range [IQR] = 25) and 50 mL (IQR = 50), respectively. The median hospitalization time was 15.8 hours (IQR = 2.5). None of the patients of our study had COVID in the postoperative follow-up, and only two patients were rescheduled due to a positive rapid COVID test 1 day before surgery. The final pathology described 10 patients (6.8%) Grade Group (GrGp) 1, 34 (23.1%) GrGp 2, 31 (21%) GrGp 3, 16 (10.8%) GrGp 4, 37 (25.3%) GrGp 5, and 19 (13%) with deferred Gleason. Two patients, COVID negative, were readmitted due to infected lymphocele managed with antibiotic and Interventional Radiology drainage.Conclusion:
Our experience managing patients with prostate cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that changing the office routine, stratifying the patients according to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) risk, and adopting COVID-based criteria to select patients for surgery are necessary actions to maintain the best quality of treatment and minimize the viral infection among our oncological patients. In our routine, the RARP during the COVID pandemic is safe and feasible for patients and health care workers if the necessary precautions described in this article are taken.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Prostatectomy
/
Prostatic Neoplasms
/
Robotic Surgical Procedures
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
/
Male
Language:
English
Journal:
J Endourol
Journal subject:
Urology
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
End.2020.0751
Similar
MEDLINE
...
LILACS
LIS