In an interview with CancerNetwork®, Mary-Elizabeth Percival, MD, oncology hematologist at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and the University of Washington (UW) Medical Center, as well as assistant professor of Hematology and Medicine at UW, spoke about the set of guidelines she and her colleagues culminated regarding treating patients with hematologic malignancies during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
With Washington being the first location to see a case of COVID-19 in the US, Percival indicated that some early measures had to be taken in order to stop the spread of the virus, such as telemedicine visits in lieu of bringing the patients into the clinic.
“We didn’t want to have our patients with hematologic malignancies, you know, kind of vying for beds with COVID-19 patients, let alone the potential risks of transmission in that kind of situation…
