A Rare Combination of Breast, and Thyroid Carcinoma, with Superadded COVID-19 Infection in Mother: Struggle of a Doctor as a Daughter – Case Report

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected the diagnosis and management of cancer patients to a large extent, with many patients being diagnosed at a later stage, and many are not able to get appropriate treatment. Furthermore, cancer patients are more prone to suffer from severe COVID-19 infection and its associated morbidity and mortality. Breast cancer is one of the commonest cancers affecting women worldwide and its number is projected to increase sharply in the post-COVID-19 era due to a serious fall in screening modalities, as patients stopped reporting to the hospital because of lockdown, movement restrictions, and fear of contracting the infection. The present case report briefs a mother's sufferings and the impact it has on a daughter who is a doctor herself. It reports a rare combination of two primaries in the breast and thyroid in an asymptomatic patient with a rare mutation of the BLM gene detected incidentally. The patient was successfully operated on for stage IB ductal carcinoma breast with hemithyroidectomy and was put on chemotherapy with Cyclophosphamide 1000mg (600mg/m2) and Doxorubicin 100 mg (60mg/m2) per cycle on day one every fortnightly followed by four cycles of Paclitaxel 175mg/m2 every fortnightly. After the second cycle, the patient developed severe neutropenia and COVID-19 infection with atypical symptoms that severely involved her lungs, leading to the loss of the patient. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of cancer patients have lost their lives, not due to cancer directly but due to failed early detection, treatment, loss of follow-up, and superadded severe COVID-19 infection.