| ORIGINAL ARTICLE |
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| Year : 2021 | Volume
: 12
| Issue : 2 | Page : 77-81 |
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Severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (COVID-19) infection and its impact on cancer patients receiving radiation therapy: Prevalence, protection, and clinical effects
Kannan Venkatesan, J Anand Vivek, Deshpande Sudesh, Umbarkar Prakash, Ranjit Bajpai, Rohit Kabre, Ritika Hinduja, Priyanka Alurkar, Suresh Naidu, Kamalnayan Chauhan, Sandeep Shinde, Neeta Parmar, Ashwini Jejurkar, Prashant Kamble, Santosh Ullagaddi, Omkar Jadhav, Madhvi Tawde, Jyothy Nambiar, Ravindra Rohekar, Preeti Goraksha, Rajasi Dharia
Department of Medicine, Radiotherapy Section, P. D. Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Correspondence Address:
Mr. Umbarkar Prakash
Department of Medicine, Radiotherapy Section, P. D. Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre, Mumbai, Maharashtra
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/jrcr.jrcr_52_20
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Introduction: COVID-19 illness caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020. It had an overwhelming effect on health-care delivery in India. We report the 5 months, April–September 2020, experience in our radiotherapy (RT) department. Methods: Since April–September 2020, we registered 184 cancer patients with various site diseases for RT/chemoradiation treatment for curative/palliative therapy. Preregistration and weekly once during treatment period all underwent throat/nasopharynx swab testing with reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. Dedicated infection prophylaxis was carried for patients and staff. Results: Of the 184 patients, 10.9% (20/184) swab results were positive for SARS-CoV-2. With appropriate COVID-19 care and quarantine, 18 patients completed the planned RT. Two died with COVID-19 infection illness and progressive locoregional cancer. We observed no excess acute RT/chemoradiation effects in this group due to infection. Conclusions: Our 5-month experience in this COVID-19 pandemic period reveals that RT treatment, COVID-19 care, and quarantine can be done with dedicated infection protective measures.
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