Impact and Future Changes to Breast Cancer Care Due to Covid-19 |Biomedgrid

A novel coronavirus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) was identified and the World Health Organization (WHO) termed with illness it caused coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This occurred in late 2019 and was first identified in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China [1]. By the beginning of March 2020 many restrictions were in place across the United States to decrease transmission of the virus and the disease burden on health systems. These restrictions to contain COVID-19 impacted various aspects of the health systems across the nation and their ability to deliver care. Specifically, the ability of health systems to respond to emergencies, obtain sufficient health care supplies and maintain adequate numbers of health staff were compromised [2,3]. Early in the pandemic, several large United States (US) based medical societies including the American Society of Breast Surgeons (ASBrS), the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC), the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), the Commission on Cancer (CoC) and the American College of Radiology (ACR) collaborated to provide expert opinion regarding how to prioritize patients diagnosed with breast cancer during this time [4]. These recommendations placed patients into different groups based on the acuity of disease and risk of disease progression while evaluating the risk of intervention based on hospital resources and risk of personnel exposure.