During the COVID-19 pandemic, access to ‘planned’ surgical care was restricted as the health care system responded to the novel coronavirus. It remains unknown whether these limitations have had any impacts on outcomes of surgical oncology patients due to delay in presentation, treatment, or changes in the hospital milieu due to the pandemic.
We hypothesize that the pandemic resulted in diagnostic and therapeutic delays, leading to stage migration amongst patients with malignancies treated with a Whipple procedure.
This study is a retrospective review of adult patients with a gastrointestinal malignancy who underwent surgical exploration for a planned Whipple procedure at St. Joseph’s Health Centre between March 11, 2019, and March 11, 2021 (one year prior to the WHO declaration of a global pandemic and the first year thereafter). Primary outcome will be stage migration based on intraoperative findings of metastatic disease and stage of resected specimens. Secondary outcomes will be a comparison of peri-operative outcomes between the two years.
The data from this study will assist health care administrators and providers to optimize resource allocation and public health messaging in future health care crises.
EP02D-042