Dr. Tap on the Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sarcoma

William D. Tap, MD, chief of the Sarcoma Medical Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the treatment of patients with sarcoma.

The treatment of patients with sarcoma was significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, says Tap. Questions that arose during the height of the pandemic included how to appropriately continue patient care, how patients with cancer are affected by COVID-19, how to safely and remotely manage patients with cancer, and how to continue clinical research safely, Tap explains. Additionally, investigators in the field of sarcoma are trying to understand how COVID-19 affects patients based on the different types of treatments they receive, including chemotherapies, alkylating agents, anthracyclines, and targeted therapies, Tap adds.

Ultimately, these questions remain less understood in sarcoma compared with other more common tumor types, Tap says. The hope is that enough data will be available from patients with sarcoma to draw conclusions about how the COVID-19 pandemic affected this patient population, concludes Tap.