Already in mid-March, Health Minister Jens Spahn called on heads of clinics to arrange only urgent and necessary operations and to postpone planned ones. However, the hospitals themselves decide which surgical operations still have to be carried out, as about 50 percent of all surgical beds should be kept free for corona emergency situations. Patients will then have to be put off for the possible Covid-19 attack. Surgery may now only be performed in emergencies, but many experts, such as Robert Grützmann, head of surgery at the University Hospital Erlangen, believe that the onslaught will not occur and that there will rather be a flat wave-like movement for months. This is why many hospitals check their bed capacities after weeks and can then have more operations performed again, also because 500,000 people in Germany are diagnosed with cancer every year, some of whom urgently need surgery. An investigation carried out by German Cancer Aid, the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) and the German Cancer Society (DKG) with the help of Task Force 17, which has been set up specifically for this purpose, is to highlight any shortcomings in the care of cancer patients at university cancer centres in times of the corona pandemic. The analysis of the situation could then be extended to 1,300 sites in total. But many industry experts, such as the director of the university tumor clinic in Essen, Martin Schuler, for example, consider the current situation to be appropriate. However, only the necessary operations would take place. There are also only slight changes in early detection measures and in patients without symptoms, but also to some extent in aftercare practices. Necessary still means life-saving, Schuler clarifies, which is why, for example, stoma rescheduling is being postponed while colon cancer operations, which are absolutely urgent, continue to take place. Even operations on small tumours with a good prognosis can be postponed. However, experts believe that the consequences of tumour diagnosis and the possible postponement of operations in spring 2020 might have consequences that are not yet visible at this stage. The best example of this is lung cancer, where patients have a poorer chance of survival if surgery is postponed for 90 days. However, some patients do not take advantage of aftercare appointments due to concerns about corona virus infection, which worries doctors. Schuler therefore urgently warns against a „carry-over“ of tumor diseases for fear of SARS CoV-2.
