Breast Cancer and Covid 19 #1

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected just about every aspect of life, including screening, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up care for breast cancer. People who’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer and people who are at high risk for breast cancer have found themselves in a uniquely difficult and sometimes frightening position since the coronavirus crisis began. Many of you are wondering if it’s safe to go to certain medical appointments or if you should postpone treatments or screening. Others have had their treatments delayed or changed.

In this Special Report from Breastcancer.org, we have gathered the most important information you need to know about the impact the coronavirus has had on breast cancer care, including why currently being treated for breast cancer can raise the risk of serious COVID-19 complications, what healthcare facilities are doing to minimize your exposure to the virus when seeking medical care, and how to get the best care possible even if your treatment plan changes.

In March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and local and state governments recommended that healthcare systems delay elective care, meaning surgeries, screenings, and other treatments that are not considered urgent or emergencies. Hospitals began canceling some surgeries and limiting other services to protect people from being exposed to COVID-19 and to save resources such as hospital beds, personal protective equipment (PPE), blood supply, and staff time so they could be used to care for seriously ill patients with COVID-19.

Time will tell whether we made the right decisions in order to try to protect our patients from the virus and take care of the breast cancer,” said Jill Dietz, M.D., FACS, co-founder of the COVID-19 Pandemic Breast Cancer Consortium, president of the American Society of Breast Surgeons, and associate professor of surgery at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. “Having a diagnosis of breast cancer at any time is very scary, and now it’s especially difficult. I feel so bad for the patients going through breast cancer treatment during the pandemic, and I feel bad for the physicians who were told they can’t practice like they normally practice.”

Doctors are looking at each person’s unique situation and diagnosis when deciding how to best move forward with breast cancer treatment during the pandemic. For example, they are looking at whether a person has a higher risk of becoming seriously ill from a COVID-19 infection due to a weakened immune system from treatments such as chemotherapy or targeted therapy, or because of their age or other health problems.

Healthcare facilities have adopted stricter safety practices to reduce the risk of exposing people to COVID-19. At the same time, many cancer treatment plans have been changed so people don’t have to spend as much time at these facilities. Medical appointments are being spread out to avoid close contact between people, more appointments are being done over the phone or online, and hospital stays after surgery have been shortened. In some cases, fewer in-person visits are required to complete chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

Still, all of the usual treatment options may not always be available to people with breast cancer during the pandemic. In the spring, for example, people may have had to wait weeks or months for certain breast cancer surgeries unless they were diagnosed with an aggressive type of breast cancer. Also, breast imaging was only available for urgent cases, access to new treatments through clinical trials was limited, and fertility-preserving procedures were not available in some places.

Donna-Marie Manasseh, M.D., chief of the division of breast surgery and director of the breast cancer program at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY, said the changes to treatment plans have been stressful for both patients and healthcare providers. But she wants people with breast cancer to know that healthcare providers are carefully considering their decisions, with the goal of providing the best care possible in these circumstances.

“It’s not that the COVID-19 patients became more important than the breast cancer patients,” she said. “We’re making a true, conscious effort to figure out the right things to do for our breast cancer patients — which includes protecting them from COVID-19 and treating their cancer.” In May, when some areas of the country were seeing a drop in COVID-19 cases, the CDC and other health authorities said that healthcare systems should consider providing elective care again. Surgeries, screenings, and other care that had been put on hold started up again in many parts of the United States during May and June. But by late June and early July, restrictions on elective care started again in new hot spots such as Arizona, Texas, and Florida. As the situation evolves, changes in breast cancer care continue to happen in some places.

From www.breastcancer.org