Outpatient Management of Cancer Patients During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Abstract
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first identified in Wuhan, China. In no time, SARS-CoV- 2 found its way to the whole world, to be declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11th, 2020. As this disease continues to take its toll on the world as a whole, we, at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC), believe that it is essential to protect those who are at a particularly high-risk for contracting the virus, namely cancer patients. Besides complying with all the protective measures recommended by WHO, we developed quality improvement plans for the outpatient management of febrile neutropenia, pneumonia and pulmonary embolism in cancer patients. The aim of such plans is to offer adequate management for cancer patients on an outpatient basis, whenever possible, and thus limit their admission rates together with their risk of contracting the novel virus, SARS-CoV- 2.