The threat of the COVID-19 pandemic on reversing global life-saving gains in the survival of childhood cancer: a call for collaborative action from SIOP, IPSO, PROS, WCC, CCI, St Jude Global, UICC and WHPCA

The COVID-19 pandemic poses an unprecedented health crisis in all socio-economic regions across the globe. While the pandemic has had a profound impact on access to and delivery of health care by all services, it has been particularly disruptive for the care of patients with life-threatening noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as the treatment of children and young people with cancer.

The reduction in child mortality from preventable causes over the last 50 years has seen childhood cancer emerge as a major unmet health care need. Whilst survival rates of 85% have been achieved in high income countries, this has not yet been translated into similar outcomes for children with cancer in resource-limited settings where survival averages 30%. Launched in 2018, by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer (GICC) is a pivotal effort by the international community to achieve at least 60% survival for children with cancer by 2030.

The WHO GICC is already making an impact in many countries but the disruption of cancer care during the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to set back this global effort to improve the outcome for children with cancer, wherever they may live.

As representatives of the global community committed to fostering the goals of the GICC, we applaud the WHO response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular we support the WHO’s call to ensure the needs of patients with life threatening NCDs including cancer are not compromised during the pandemic. Here, as collaborative partners in the GICC, we highlight specific areas of focus that need to be addressed to ensure the immediate care of children and adolescents with cancer is not disrupted during the pandemic; and measures to sustain the development of cancer care so the long-term goals of the GICC are not lost during this global health crisis.

Clinical practice guideline improves the treatment of sickle cell disease vasoocclusive pain

BACKGROUND

Pain is the most common complication of sickle cell disease requiring emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalization. A Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) to manage acute sickle cell pain offers clinicians a standardized approach for the provision of evidence-based, cost-effective care. After CPG implementation, monitoring of pre-established indicators is a strategy to evaluate progress toward meeting the goal of providing rapid, effective pain relief for patients with acute sickle cell pain.

METHODS

A retrospective chart review of patients with sickle cell disease admitted through the ED at Children's Hospital Boston with the primary diagnosis of vaso-occlusive pain was performed for a period before and after implementation of the CPG. Endpoints measured were: use of a validated pain scale, time from ED triage to first dose of analgesic, use of adequate weight-based analgesic dosing, frequency and location of PCA initiation, and time from ED triage to patient controlled analgesia (PCA) initiation.

RESULTS

Two hundred sixty three sickle cell pain admissions in 93 unique subjects were analyzed, 51 pre-CPG and 212 post-CPG. Statistically significant improvements in use of pain scale, appropriate weight-based analgesic dosing, utilization of PCA, and time to initiation of PCA were observed. There was not a statistically significant improvement in the percentage of subjects who received their 1st dose of analgesic within 1 hr; however the median time to first analgesic was reduced significantly from 80 to 65 min (P = 0.003).

CONCLUSIONS

Implementation of a CPG to manage acute sickle cell pain in the ED improves the ability to deliver timely, effective analgesia to this patient population. Establishing and monitoring internal benchmarks provides a means for ongoing evaluation of the pre-established goals for patient care.