Professor Do Joong Park, MD, PhD
Seoul National University Hospital, Republic of Korea
What are the unique challenges your institution faced since being confronted with the pandemic?
Seoul National University Hospital, as a national central hospital, is equipped with a screening clinic for corona-virus screening and has many negative pressure rooms for the treatment of severe corona-infected patients. In addition, a quarantine center was placed in an independent building to isolate and treat mild corona patients.
How did hospital administration tap into surgical oncology staff to support COVID-19 patients?
The surgical oncology staff, as before, continued to focus primarily on surgical treatment for cancer patients and was not specifically mobilized to support COVID-19 patients.
How has the pandemic changed your cancer patient treatment regimens? Have you had to delay many surgeries?
Treatment of cancer patients has not changed significantly. Mainly surgeries for patients with mild disease other than cancer were delayed, but surgeries for relatively severe cancer patients are being performed without significant delay. However, the number of surgeries for early cancer has been reduced due to the decrease of health screening examination.
What is your current case volume (%) of cancer surgeries and what type of procedures are you doing? Where do you think you are on the curve – and how do you see it changing over the coming weeks?
The overall number of cancer surgeries did not decrease significantly, but as mentioned earlier, the number of early cancer surgeries decreased. If COVID-19 patients continue to develop, this will not change significantly over the next few weeks.
Can you share some of the personal and professional challenges you have faced during these unprecedented times?
In the hospital as a whole, the number of patients is decreasing, and the financial management is suffering, so personal income is also partially reduced. It is also difficult to hold cancer-related conferences or seminars, which is causing difficulties in research and education.