Management of Respiratory Failure Caused by COVID-19 after Thoracoscopic Esophagectomy

Since December 2019, with the first descriptions of cases of pneumonia caused by the new coronavirus in Wuhan, China, the virus causing this infection has spread globally (1). One of the main characteristics of this new virus is its high transmissibility (2). Since February 2020, when the first coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) case was reported in Brazil, a series of changes have been incorporated for the treatment of cancer patients with COVID-19. In particular, for patients with esophageal cancer, additional precautions have been taken, as surgery for esophageal cancer alone has higher morbidity and mortality rates compared to that for other oncological surgeries (3). In this context, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) caused by COVID-19 can pose a serious risk to the patient. Patients with cancer are more susceptible to infection than individuals without cancer owing to their systemic immunosuppressive state caused by the malignancy and anticancer treatments such as chemotherapy or surgery. Therefore, these patients might have an increased risk of COVID-19 as well as a poorer prognosis (4). We report the case of a young man who underwent thoracoscopic subtotal esophagectomy for distal esophageal adenocarcinoma who developed COVID-19 with severe clinical presentation.