Clinical and oncological outcomes of surgery in Anorectal melanoma in Asian population: A 15 year analysis at a tertiary cancer institute.

INTRODUCTION: Anorectal malignant melanoma (ARMM) is an aggressive malignancy with dismal prognosis and a 5-year survival rate less than 20% in most of the previous studies. The ideal surgical treatment has still remained controversial. This retrospective study aims at analysing the outcome in patients with ARMM treated with curative surgical resection. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This is a retrospective study of 38 patients of stage I anorectal malignant melanoma treated with curative surgical resection at our tertiary cancer institute. RESULTS: WLE (Wide Local Excision) was carried out in 12 patients and APR (abdominoperineal resection) was done in 26 patients. The median overall survival of the entire group in this study was 20 months. Although the median overall survival of WLE patients was higher than those with APR (37 months versus 16 months, respectively), this was not a statistically significant event (P=0.317). The 1-, 2-, 3-, 5-year survival rates were similar with both APR and WLE with no significant difference in the 5-year survival rate (P=0.816); overall 5-year survival rate of just 13%. There were 3 long-term survivors in this study group who survived for more than 10 years. CONCLUSION: Most patients ultimately succumb to the disease regardless of the management. Both APR and WLE have significant roles in the management depending on the subset of patients selected. Local treatment should be preferred wherever possible. Abdominoperineal resection should be offered in nodal disease or in a recurrent setting.

Impact of COVID -19 in cancer patients on severity of disease and fatal outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND AND AIMSBACKGROUND: Currently there is limited knowledge on cancer and COVID-19; we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the impact of cancer on serious events including ICU admission rate and mortality in COVID 19. METHODS: PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Clinical Trials were searched on April 16, 2020, to extract published articles that reported the outcomes of cancer in COVID-19 patients. The search terms were "coronavirus" and "clinical characteristics" with no language or time restrictions. We identified 512 published results and 13 studies were included in the analysis. RESULTS: There were 3775 patients, of whom 63 (1·66%) had a cancer. The pooled estimates of ICU admission in COVID 19 patients with and without cancer were 40% versus 8·42%.The odds ratio of ICU admission rates between the cancer and non-cancer groups was 2.88 with a 95% CI of 1·18 to 7·01 (p = 0·026). The pooled estimates of death rate in COVID -19 patients with and without cancer were 20·83% versus 7·82%. The odds ratio of death rates between the cancer and non-cancer groups was 2.25 with a 95% CI ranging from 0·71 to 7·10 with p value of 0·166. The pooled prevalence of cancer patients was 2% (95 CI 1-4). CONCLUSIONS: Presence of cancer in COVID-19 leads to higher risk of developing serious events i.e. ICU admission, mechanical ventilation and mortality. The presence of cancer has a significant impact on mortality rate in COVID-19 patients.