Impact of COVID-19 on cardiovascular testing in the United States versus the rest of the world

Objectives: This study sought to quantify and compare the decline in volumes of cardiovascular procedures between the United States and non-US institutions during the early phase of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the care of many non-COVID-19 illnesses. Reductions in diagnostic cardiovascular testing around the world have led to concerns over the implications of reduced testing for cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Methods: Data were submitted to the INCAPS-COVID (International Atomic Energy Agency Non-Invasive Cardiology Protocols Study of COVID-19), a multinational registry comprising 909 institutions in 108 countries (including 155 facilities in 40 U.S. states), assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volumes of diagnostic cardiovascular procedures. Data were obtained for April 2020 and compared with volumes of baseline procedures from March 2019. We compared laboratory characteristics, practices, and procedure volumes between U.S. and non-U.S. facilities and between U.S. geographic regions and identified factors associated with volume reduction in the United States. Results: Reductions in the volumes of procedures in the United States were similar to those in non-U.S. facilities (68% vs. 63%, respectively; p = 0.237), although U.S. facilities reported greater reductions in invasive coronary angiography (69% vs. 53%, respectively; p < 0.001). Significantly more U.S. facilities reported increased use of telehealth and patient screening measures than non-U.S. facilities, such as temperature checks, symptom screenings, and COVID-19 testing. Reductions in volumes of procedures differed between U.S. regions, with larger declines observed in the Northeast (76%) and Midwest (74%) than in the South (62%) and West (44%). Prevalence of COVID-19, staff redeployments, outpatient centers, and urban centers were associated with greater reductions in volume in U.S. facilities in a multivariable analysis. Conclusions: We observed marked reductions in U.S. cardiovascular testing in the early phase of the pandemic and significant variability between U.S. regions. The association between reductions of volumes and COVID-19 prevalence in the United States highlighted the need for proactive efforts to maintain access to cardiovascular testing in areas most affected by outbreaks of COVID-19 infection

Preoperative chemosensitivity testing as Predictor of Treatment benefit in Adjuvant stage III colon cancer (PePiTA): Protocol of a prospective BGDO (Belgian Group for Digestive Oncology) multicentric study

BACKGROUND: Surgery is a curative treatment for patients with locally advanced colon cancer, but recurrences are frequent for those with stage III disease. FOLFOX adjuvant chemotherapy has been shown to improve recurrence-free survival and overall survival by more than 20% and is nowadays considered a standard of care. However, the vast majority of patients will not benefit from receiving cytotoxic drugs because they have either already been cured by surgery or because their tumor cells are resistant to the chemotherapy, for which predictive factors are still not available. Identifying which patients are unlikely to respond to adjuvant chemotherapy from among those who are eligible for such treatment would be a major step towards treatment personalization. It would spare such patients from unnecessary toxicities and would improve the allocation of societal healthcare resources. METHODS/DESIGN: PePiTA is a prospective, multicenter, non-randomised trial built on the hypothesis that preoperative chemosensitivity testing using FDG-PET/CT before and after one course of FOLFOX can identify the patients who are unlikely to benefit from 6 months of adjuvant FOLFOX treatment for stage III colon cancer. The study’s primary objective is to examine the ability of PET/CT-assessed tumor FDG uptake after one course of preoperative chemotherapy to predict the outcome of adjuvant therapy, as measured by 3-year disease-free survival. Secondary objectives are to examine the predictive value of changes in PET/CT-assessed tumor FDG uptake on overall survival, to define the best cut-off value of FDG uptake for predicting treatment outcome, and to analyse the cost-effectiveness of such preoperative chemo-sensitivity testing. At study planning, exploratory translational research objectives were 1) to assess the predictive value of circulating tumor cells for disease-free survival, 2) to examine the predictive value of single nucleotide polymorphisms for disease-free survival with respect to genes related either to toxicity or to drug targets, 3) to assess genomic rearrangements associated with response or resistance to FOLFOX treatment, 4) to identify an immunologic signature associated with metabolic tumor response to FOLFOX therapy and, finally, 5) to create a bank of frozen tumor samples for future studies. DISCUSSION: PePiTA is the first study to use the primitive tumor chemosensitivity assessed by metabolic imaging as a guidance for adjuvant therapy in colon cancer. It could pave the way for tailoring the treatment and avoiding useless toxicities for the patients and inadequate expenses for the society. It could also give an interesting insight into tumoral heterogeneity, resistance to chemotherapy, genetic predisposants to oxaliplatin toxicity and immune response to cancer. EUDRACT NUMBER: 2009-011445-13 TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT0099486

Erratum: Preoperative chemosensitivity testing as Predictor of Treatment benefit in Adjuvant stage III colon cancer (PePiTA): Protocol of a prospective BGDO (Belgian Group for Digestive Oncology) multicentric study

Erratum for Preoperative chemosensitivity testing as Predictor of Treatment benefit in Adjuvant stage III colon cancer (PePiTA): protocol of a prospective BGDO (Belgian Group for Digestive Oncology) multicentric study. [BMC Cancer. 2013