Background: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has caused substantial disruptions in routine clinical care. Emerging data show that surgery in coronavirus disease (COVID)-positive cases can be associated with worsening of clinical outcomes and increased postoperative mortality. Hence, preoperative COVID-19 testing for all patients before elective surgery was implemented in our institution. Materials and Methods: Two hundred and sixty-two asymptomatic cancer patients were preoperatively tested for COVID-19 using reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction technique with nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabbing. All negative patients were operated within 72 hours, and positive patients were quarantined for a minimum 14 days before re-swabbing. Results: In our cohort, 21 of 262 (8.0%) asymptomatic preoperative patients, who were otherwise fit for surgery, tested positive. After adequate quarantine and a negative follow-up test report, 12 of 21 (57%) had an operation. No major postoperative morbidity due to COVID-19 was noted during the immediate postoperative period before discharge from the hospital. Conclusion: Routine preoperative COVID-19 testing was successful in identifying asymptomatic viral carriers. There was no incidence of symptomatic COVID-19 disease in the postoperative period, and there was no incidence of morbidity attributable to COVID-19. These data suggested a beneficial role for mandatory preoperative COVID-19 testing.

Background Poorly differentiated adenocarcinomas and signet ring adenocarcinomas are aggressive histological subtypes of rectal cancer with a high incidence of occult peritoneal metastasis. Methods This was a retrospective review of aggressive histology of rectal cancer patients who underwent pre‐treatment surgical staging as part of ovarian transposition or ostomy creation for diversion at a single tertiary cancer centre between January 2014 and December 2019. Results A total of 117 patients underwent surgical staging and were deemed non‐metastatic on imaging. Surgical staging led to the detection of metastasis in 29.9% of patients. This led to modification in treatment protocol in 20.5% and change in intent of therapy in 15.4%. The majority (80%) was found to have peritoneal disease with peritoneal carcinomatosis index <17. Only T4 disease predicted the presence of metastasis on surgical staging with an odds ratio of 2.69 (P = 0.035). Conclusions A significant proportion of patients with aggressive histology rectal cancers are upstaged after surgical staging. Further investigation of this tool for staging is warranted.

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