Continuing cancer treatment in a “COVID HOTSPOT” in India: Are we overestimating the risks?

Context: We describe the treatment of cancer patients carried out in a Government of India-designated, dedicated coronavirus disease (COVID) hospital (DCH) in a COVID hotspot in India. Aims: The aim was to study the change and delay in the management of cancer patients during the pandemic and its complications. Settings and Design: This was an observational cohort study conducted at a tertiary care center, which was also a DCH. Subjects and Methods: Cancer patients receiving cancer surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy in our DCH, during the lockdown, were studied. Results: A total of 864 patients received treatment for cancer in our hospital during the period of March 20, 2020 – May 31, 2020. There were no COVID-related complications. The treatment of 109/864 patients (12.61%) was delayed due to the pandemic and lockdown situation and the treatment plan was changed for 84/864 (9.72%) patients. There were 21 deaths in these 864 patients (2.43%), but only two deaths were COVID related. Symptomatic patients were tested for COVID, and 3/864 patients (0.34%) were detected to be COVID positive.Conclusions: We successfully delivered cancer treatment to patients in our DCH. The percentage of adverse effects, symptomatic COVID infection, and related mortality has been very low in our study. Cancer care can be continued with due diligence even during this pandemic.

Synchronous primary malignancies in breast and kidney: a rare case report

Multiple synchronous malignancies are rarer than metachronous ones. Primary synchronous breast and renal cancer is even rare. Such a case requires strict exclusion of possible metastasis to either site and to confirm the primary nature of each malignancy for better outcome of management and survival benefit. Multiple primary synchronous malignancies may be due to shared genetic mutations if any common carcinogenic factor cannot be found. The role of estrogens in cases in which human renal carcinoma is associated with other primary tumours involving steroid-hormone target tissues, is tentative and can only be hypothesised due to paucity of such data in literature. One should consider the possibility of concomitant dual or multiple primary tumours in a patient presented with mass lesions at various sites, especially if one of the sites is the kidney. We present a case report of a patient with synchronous primary breast and renal cancer.