key: cord-0941950-nx00y1vv
authors: Tan, Xiao-Bo; Peng, Dong; Liu, Xiao-Yu; Cheng, Yong
title: The safety of on gastrointestinal cancer surgery during COVID-19：A meta-analysis
date: 2021-06-11
journal: Asian J Surg
DOI: 10.1016/j.asjsur.2021.05.043
sha: ac653d27a1a9d97f0e780d956d133b5efccf9ceb
doc_id: 941950
cord_uid: nx00y1vv

nan

To the editor:

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been declared to be a global pandemic since 2019, and people suffered from the respiratory disease a lot. 1 Cancer patients were not firstly suffered COVID-19, however, due to COVID-19, patients would suffer delayed chemotherapy and surgery, which might cause poor survival. 2 The purpose of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the safety of on gastrointestinal cancer surgery during COVID-19.

PubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane Library database were searched for eligible studies on May 20, 2021. The search items were as follows: ("COVID-19" OR "coronavirus" OR "SARS-CoV-2" OR "2019-nCoV" OR "SARS nCoV2") AND ("colorectal cancer" OR "colon cancer" OR "rectal cancer" OR "colorectal neoplasm" OR "colon neoplasm" OR "rectal neoplasm" OR "colorectal tumor" OR "colon tumor" OR "rectal tumor" OR "gastric cancer" OR "gastric carcinoma" OR "gastric neoplasms" OR "stomach cancer" OR "stomach carcinoma" OR "stomach neoplasms"). The search scope was limited to the title and abstract. A total of 647 studies (285 studies in PubMed, 355 in EMBASE and 7 in Cochrane Library database) were identified in the database, and after removing duplicates, 421 studies were left for initial screening. Finally, three studies were included in this meta-analysis (Fig  1a) . [3] [4] [5] RevMan 5.3 (The Cochrane Collaboration, London, United Kingdom) was used to conduct data analysis in this meta-analysis.

The three studies were published between 2020-2021, and two studies were from China, one study was from Austria. The cancer type, study design, sample size and NOS (Newcastle-Ottawa Scale) score were shown in Table 1 . After pooling up all the complications, no significant difference was found between before COVID-19 group and during COVID-19 group (OR=1.12, 95% CI=0.63 to 1.99, p=0.71) (Fig 1b) .

Therefore, it is safe for surgeons performing gastrointestinal cancer surgery during COVID-19.

Ethics approval and consent statement: No applicable. J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f

A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China

How Coronavirus Disease 2019 Outbreak Is Impacting Colorectal Cancer Patients in Italy: A Long Shadow Beyond Infection

The impact of COVID-19 on gastric cancer surgery: a single-center retrospective study

How Does the COVID-19 Pandemic Influence Surgical Case Load and Histological Outcome for Colorectal Cancer? A Single-Centre Experience

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Elective Surgery for Colorectal Cancer