RESUMO
With the entire world in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic, several health care facilities have stopped or delayed performing elective surgeries in order to cater to ever increasing number of COVID-19 patients. Moreover, there were initial reports of poor surgical outcomes in patients who underwent surgery and were found to be positive for COVID-19 infection in post-operative period. In this study, we have evaluated the short-term outcomes of head and neck oncology patients operated in our institute following a strict screening protocol and conducting COVID-19 testing by Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction once the test was available. 68 patients operated between 1st April and 30th September, 2020 (COVID-19 era, study group) were compared with 59 patients operated during 1st October, 2019 to 31st March 2020 (Non COVID-19 era, control group). The comparison between the groups was done by measuring 30 days complication rate as defined by Dindo-Clavien classification. 10.3% of patients developed complications in study group as compared to 8.5% of patients in control group which was statistically non-significant (p = 0.7). Importantly, none of the patients developed any sign or symptom suggestive of COVID-19 infection in post-operative period in study group. Head and neck oncology related cancer procedures including complex reconstruction can safely be performed during COVID-19 era by proper screening and pre-operative testing for COVID-19. We also suggest use of N95 masks and face shields as bare minimum in order to ensure the safety of health care workers even after a negative COVID-19 report.
RESUMO
Breast cancer has emerged as a major health problem among women in India. There are few Indian studies which have looked at prevalence of molecular subtypes of breast cancer in Indian population. The primary objective of our study was to find out the prevalence of various molecular subtypes in operated cases of breast cancer patients presenting to us. Three hundred sixty patients who were operated in our department were analysed. Clinicopathological features of all cases were recorded. Classification into various molecular subtypes was done using St. Gallen 2013 criteria. Luminal B HER2 negative was the predominant molecular subtype in our study population constituting 30.3% of patients. The percentage of aggressive subtypes, viz. triple negative breast cancer and HER2 enriched, were 21.7% and 11.4% respectively. Only 19.4% of patients in our study population had tumour size ≤ 2 cm with nodes being positive in 56.9% of our patients at presentation. Data from our study and other studies published from India show that the two most aggressive subtypes of, viz. triple negative breast cancer and HER2 enriched, may be more prevalent in our population as compared to western population.
