Thoracic Surgical Oncology: Maintaining a High-Volume Surgical Program During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Thoracic surgical oncology is a time-sensitive, high-resource, complex surgical speciality to which coronavirus has posed a unique challenge. In response to the evolving situation in mainland Europe, our department rapidly established a coronavirus disease 2019-free site to maintain elective cancer surgery. This necessitated a strict admission pathway and perioperative patient management. It resulted in the maintenance of a high-volume, high-quality thoracic surgical oncology program with no coronavirus disease 2019-positive cases to date. Maintaining satisfactory training levels among surgical and anesthetic trainees has also been achieved. We suggest that this model could be adapted to local resource capabilities.