key: cord-0750569-cof2mwh8
authors: Sanz-Santos, José; Rami-Porta, Ramón; Call, Sergi
title: Lessons already learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic
date: 2020-04-22
journal: Journal of thoracic oncology : official publication of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer
DOI: 10.1016/j.jtho.2020.04.012
sha: 403225014e10b9135cf0cd0b5aee1204c9363c2b
doc_id: 750569
cord_uid: cof2mwh8

nan

The first Covid-19 patient in Spain was registered on 31 st January 2020. Since then, the escalating growth of the disease has affected more than 150,000 patients, has caused over 15,000 deaths, and a similar number of health professionals has been infected. As of 10 th April 2020, Spain is the European country with the highest number of patients and the third in the world regarding deaths 1 .

The thoracic surgery service of our 400-bed hospital serves a population of 1,200,000 inhabitants, performs about 120 lung resections for lung cancer and over 90 surgical of delays are difficult to quantify, but most likely will jeopardize the fate of many patients. The workload, once we can resume normal activities, will be enormous.

The Covid-19 pandemic may not be the only one we will have to face in our professional lives. If there were another one, all measures should be taken to keep a section of the hospital clean, so that the regular activities could continue for as long as possible. Sooner or later patients have to be transferred to makeshift hospitals. If this is done in the early phase of the disease 2 , normal activities could be continued for much longer and priority cancer patients would benefit of timely treatment. The early testing of health personnel and patients and the use of adequate protective gear would prevent the dissemination of disease in the hospital, which has been catastrophic in our case. These measures would reduce the number of infections among the health care personnel, would maintain an area of the hospital clean, and would increase the capacity to continue the regular activities with non-Covid-19 patients.

Thoracic Surgery Outcomes Research Network, Inc. COVID-19 giuidance for triage of operations for thoracic malignancies: a consensus statement from Thoracic Surgery Research Network, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons and the American Association for Thoracic Surgery