Management of Pancreatic Cancer During COVID-19 Pandemic: To Treat or Not to Treat?

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is a very aggressive disease and survival remains dismal even with treatment. Currently, management of patients with pancreatic cancer has been complicated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Medical oncologists face the dilemma of whether to treat or to not treat these patients who are at high-risk of complications and even death from COVID-19. No current guidelines are available and our limited experience at this time makes it more difficult to manage these patients. Although we have general strategies available from experience in Italy, we need more treatment specific strategies to help mitigate risks of complications and toxicities from chemotherapy in order to protect our patients from COVID-19 as much as possible.