• Piero Fregatti, Marco Gipponi, Maria Giacchino, Marco Sparavigna, Raquel Diaz, Emanuela Fioravanti, Chiara Cornacchia, Benedetta Conte, Matteo Lambertini, Gabriele Zoppoli, Federica Murelli, Maria Luisa Toni, Maria Teresa Calabro, Lina Orsino, and Daniele Friedman.
• Department of Surgical Sciences and Integrated Diagnostic (DISC), School of Medicine, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy.
• In Vivo. 2021 Jan 1; 35 (1): 635-639.

Background/AimThe perspective validation of a selective approach in patients undergoing breast cancer surgery was performed in order to assess whether patients as well as Health Care Workers (HCWs) were exposed to any undue risk of COVD-19 infection.Patients And MethodsFrom March 9th to June 9th 2020, 207 patients were phone-triaged by a dedicated Breast Care Nurse; a patient-tailored program was adopted with the aim of avoiding hospitalization of SARS-CoV-2 symptomatic patients, with a careful prioritization of surgical procedures according to specific disease features.ResultsTwo hundred and three out of 207 patients underwent operation; seven patients were temporarily excluded because they tested positive at phone triage (n=3), or in-hospital triage (n=3); another asymptomatic patient with negative NP swab tested IgM Ab-positive so that surgery was re-scheduled two weeks later. Four patients had no surgery; one of them was reconsidered for neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) after testing positive at phone triage; three patients were excluded because they were already hospitalized for COVID-19. Overall, mean in-hospital stay was 2.2 days (±SD, 0.7) and, after hospital discharge, no patient required readmission.ConclusionThis preventive program avoided any COVID-19 infection among patients and HCWs, so that an elective breast cancer surgical procedure can be safely and timely pursued without affecting the oncologic outcome.Copyright© 2021, International Institute of Anticancer Research (Dr. George J. Delinasios), All rights reserved.

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