ABC de Sevilla published a report recounting the feat on May 25, 2020 and the Royal Academy of Medicine of Seville just rewarded those who starred in it. As reported then, the Virgen del Rocío Hospital in Seville wasted no time during the pandemic. Although the center designed a contingency plan under which all non-urgent scheduled operations were suspended in order to devote almost all human and material resources to treating the coronavirus, those responsible for Surgery evaluated the possibility of taking advantage of this window that was opened in the operating rooms due to the threat of Covid-19 to carry out the greatest possible number of oncological operations.
“When the pandemic hit, not everyone understood that all cancer patients might be operated on. There was disorientation and fear and many people said that in cases that were not urgent it was better to leave them with chemotherapy and not operate until the risk of contagion. Even the national scientific societies recommended only operating on the most urgent and complex cases and postponing those that might continue with chemotherapy,” he said at the time.s Javier Padillo director of the Virgen del Rocío General Surgery Unit.
These conservative recommendations, known to the Ministry of Health, have been followed by eight out of ten Spanish hospitals since March 14. “We analyzed the possibilities of the hospital and the creation of protection circuits with European standards that would guarantee that no patient on whom we were going to operate would be infected and try to deal with all the cancers that we might, the simple and the complex ones”said Padillo, one of the professionals recognized by the Seville Academy of Medicine, which has awarded the University of Seville award to the professor Fernando de la Portillaon behalf of the entire Coloproctology team, which performed more than fifty surgeries for colon cancer during the declaration of the State of Alarm in Spain.
The Sevillian hospital recalls in a note that “the specialists of the Virgen del Rocío General Surgery service, led by Professor javier padillo, began an analysis of the situation adjusted to the environment of this center for the approach to cancer patients who had to undergo surgery. Thus, “Strict multidisciplinary protocols were established to solve the pathology the most prevalent neoplastic disease and with the worst prognosis for the patient according to the time of the pandemic,” says Padillo.
One of the care processes in which this strategy had the greatest positive impact was in the approach to colon and rectal cancers that are performed in the Coloproctology unit, directed by de la Portilla. «Due to the large number of patients with this disease and its severity, it was necessary to implement specific action to prevent these operations from being delayed due to the SARS-COV2 pandemic, with the consequent danger to patients», he says.
Success
The results obtained in colon and rectal cancer surgery during the period between March 16 and April 30, 2020, which coincided with the State of Alarm, were excellent. “ANDThe impact of the implemented strategy was clearly positivesince it was verified that patients with colorectal cancer were treated within the appropriate timeframes in the midst of the pandemic and with a rate of complications equal to that of before the pandemic, thus ensuring the result for the patients”, de la Portilla concludes.
The teamwork of surgeons, nurses and other related professionals (anesthetists, oncologists, radiologists) “It was vital to achieve these results and was an example for the rest of the Spanish hospitals,” say hospital sources.
