ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Solid cancer is an independent prognostic factor for poor outcome with COVID-19. As guidelines for patient management in that setting depend on retrospective efforts, we here present the first analyses of a nationwide database of patients with cancer hospitalized with COVID-19 in Belgium, with a focus on changes in anticancer treatment plans at the time of SARS-CoV-2 infection. METHODS: Nineteen Belgian hospitals identified all patients with a history of solid cancer hospitalized with COVID-19 between March 2020 and February 2021. Demographic, cancer-specific and COVID-specific data were pseudonymously entered into a central Belgian Society of Medical Oncology (BSMO)-COVID database. The association between survival and primary cancer type was analyzed through multivariate multinomial logistic regression. Group comparisons for categorical variables were carried out through a Chi-square test. RESULTS: A total of 928 patients were registered in the database; most of them were aged ≥70 years (61.0%) and with poor performance scores [57.2% Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) ≥2]. Thirty-day COVID-related mortality was 19.8%. In multivariate analysis, a trend was seen for higher mortality in patients with lung cancer (27.6% versus 20.8%, P = 0.062) and lower mortality for patients with breast cancer (13.0% versus 23.3%, P = 0.052) compared with other tumour types. Non-curative treatment was associated with higher 30-day COVID-related mortality rates compared with curative or no active treatment (25.8% versus 14.3% versus 21.9%, respectively, P < 0.001). In 33% of patients under active treatment, the therapeutic plan was changed due to COVID-19 diagnosis, most frequently involving delays/interruptions in systemic treatments (18.6%). Thirty-day COVID-related mortality was not significantly different between patients with and without treatment modifications (21.4% versus 20.5%). CONCLUSION: Interruption in anticancer treatments at the time of SARS-CoV-2 infection was not associated with a reduction in COVID-related mortality in our cohort of patients with solid cancer, highlighting that treatment continuation should be strived for, especially in the curative setting.
ABSTRACT
This paper describes and critically evaluates the new online setting encountered when the MA in Conference Interpreting at the Institute of Translation and Multilingual Communication at TH Köln - University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, was forced to move completely online as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pedagogical and interactional challenges of the pivot to remote online teaching are first contextualised and discussed, before the results of a longitudinal survey of staff and students are presented and analysed. The transition to remote online teaching brought into sharp relief the fact that pedagogical concepts and lesson plans cannot simply be transposed directly from face-to-face to online teaching, particularly regarding issues around interaction between all participants. Peer-to-peer interaction was perceived to suffer most in this context. What was particularly striking about the results of the survey was that the success of remote online teaching in conference interpreting depended on small groups, individualised and personalised learning and feedback, and reliable and user-friendly technical solutions. A strengthened pedagogical focus on remote interpreting proved to be an unintended benefit of the transition. © 2021 University of Roehampton. All rights reserved.