A Practical Guide to Mitigate the Response of Corona Virus Pandemic in Radiotherapy Treatment

Abstract

The current global pandemic of Corona virus has impacted the health care severely. Many of the non-emergency cases and general illness cases have been asked to avoid hospital visit or wait for elective surgeries. The same may not be possible for the patients suffering from cancer as it considered a major health problem owing to the risk of metastasis as well as disease becoming unresectable with time. Unfortunately, we don’t have studies weighing the risk versus benefit ratio of delaying oncological treatment weighted against an added comorbidity of COVID infection. Radiotherapy being an integral part of cancer care is affected the most as it is delivered, continuous over a long period of time and unplanned gap because of travel restriction on patients makes decision making more difficult for radiation oncologist. In this article we’ve highlighted few major problems in delivering radiation to cancer patients at this time of global pandemic of corona virus and tried to find out possible solution.

Keywords

• radiotherapy, covid-19, corona virus