Oral Versus Intravenous Chemotherapy in COVID-19 Epidemic

Abstract

The novel coronavirus has a significant impact on the routine clinical practice for cancer patients in China since December 2019. During the epidemic in mainland China, especially Wuhan, the intravenous chemotherapies of cancer patients were considerably delayed. Up to now, cancer patients throughout the world directly encounter similar obstacles. For patients who have the right to choose chemotherapeutic regimens with different administration routes, oral drugs can be considered to be applied. In this mini-review, oral chemotherapeutic drugs were compared with intravenous drugs in seven types of tumors. Accordingly, we intended to provide useful suggestions for clinicians to balance the benefits and risks of oral against intravenous chemotherapies and to choose properly substituted oral chemotherapeutic regimens for cancer patients amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.