ADVERTISEMENT
Mary-Beth Percival, MD, Talks Caring for AML Patients Amid a National Pandemic
Dr Percival discusses the provision of care to patients with AML during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Transcript
Dr. Mary-Beth Percival: The other thing that I wanted to talk about a little bit was caring for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic because I think that is something that comes to the forefront in terms of patients with cancer.
It does seem like patients with cancer have worse outcomes, in general, than patients who don't have cancer when they are otherwise matched patients when they both develop COVID-19. That is definitely a limitation that we worry about. How our patients will do and how they will be prioritized when pandemics occur.
We, at our center, have taken a lot of steps to try to prevent transmission and our rates have been extremely low in our cancer population.
We came together with all of our key malignancy colleagues to publish a paper in The Journal of Oncology Practice that came out pre-print a few months ago to help describe some of the strategies that we have taken with universal masking and now goggles for providers in the clinic. Lots of health screening, lots of prevalence COVID-19 testing for any symptoms.
Of course, that is also for patients who are being admitted to the hospital or undergoing chemotherapy or transplant. It's allowed us to continue to provide care for patients because AML is something that...It is not always treatment emergent, but it is certainly a treatment urgent diagnosis.
When patients are diagnosed with AML, we need to act quickly. We're treating what can often be a curable malignancy, but we need to make sure that we are actually treating patients appropriately, and actively, and quickly after the time that they are diagnosed.
