Tele-oncology.

Get ready for it. Preventing transmission rates among patients with cancer diagnoses calls for some practical solutions, including calling your follow-ups rather than asking them to expose themselves in the clinic. Which, let’s be honest, are primed to be hotbeds for spread. Whether or not to delay surveillance imaging may be a more difficult call based on reported symptoms. A lot of this fear for oncology patients in particular stems from, beyond common sense, this case series detailing outcomes for 18 patients infected with COVD-19 with active or previous cancer within China. Most worrisome was the report that the rate of ICU admission, intubation or death was nearly 5x greater among these patients (39%) than other hospitalized patients (8%). TBL: Based on very small numbers, patients who carry cancer diagnoses appear to be more susceptible both to acquiring COVID-19 as well as to succumbing to worse outcomes. | Liang, Lancet Oncol 2020