Many thanks to all collaborators who have contributed to the COVIDSurg-Cancer project to date. Patient identification has now ended in all centres and we are launching for the closing stages of the project.

We are aware that tracking non-operated patients was not possible in all centres, due to capacity or the design of your local care pathways.

As such, we now need to identify a team classification (group 1 or group 2) for your specialty in your hospital to help us keep track of follow-up of patients within the study. Please read the below carefully to identify your team classification and what to do next.

Please indicate your team here

Watch this short video with a discussion between two teams.

The rapid emergence of the SARS-CoV2 virus across international borders has forced the redesign of clinical services to deprioritise non-urgent surgical care. Hospitals and health systems need to continue managing cancer patients, for whom a delay in treatment can lead to poorer outcomes. On the other side, maintaining treatment for cancer can put cancer patients at higher risk of post-operative complications due to the current pandemic.

There is an emergent need to better understand the impact of COVID-19 on care of cancer patients requiring surgery. 

Hospitals:

• Any hospital performing elective cancer surgery can participate.

• Investigators can enrol patients with confirmed diagnoses of colorectal, oesophagogastric, head and neck, lung, hepatopancreataobiliary, urological, neurological, gynaecological, breast cancers and soft-tissue or bone sarcoma. As a rapid response study to the COVID-19 pandemic, included cancer types have evolved following a short pilot period.

Patient inclusion criteria:

• Patients planned for curative cancer surgery that have surgery completed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Patients that would have been planned for curative surgery in the pre-COVID-era that have surgery delayed or cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Outcomes:

• Primary outcome: 30-day postoperative COVID-19 infection rate;

• Secondary outcomes: 30-day postoperative mortality and critical care admission; delay in surgery > 4 weeks; progression to incurable disease at 3 months. 

Data collection period: Three months since the starting date (identified by local investigators as the emergence of COVID-19 in their hospital). 

Data storage: Data will be stored in a stored in a secure online platform (REDCap). Only anonymised data will be collected.

Authorship: All the collaborators will be recognised as co-authors in any publications resulting from this study.  A corporate authorship model will be used under CovidSurg Collaborative group, for example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29452941

Obtaining local approval is the most important step after registering your interest. Please find below the study protocol that you can use for that.

The global community has recognised that rapid dissemination and completion of studies in COVID-19 infected patients is a high priority. Please discuss with your head of department to identify the quickest way to secure study approval. A data collection sheet is available if you would like to collect data whilst awaiting formal study approval.

In order to facilitate communication with patients and local approvals, we have designed:

• A Patient Information Sheet and Informed Consent template. You are free to use it or adapt it, according to local requirements.

• A letter from the Royal College of Surgeons supporting CovidSurg.

• An example of a CovidSurg-Cancer local approval.

• A letter about the online secure data storage platform – REDCap. Some ethics committees may require detailed information about it.

• A poster you can use to disseminate information about the study and help tracking patients.

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