ciao bruno

Do not take me wrong. I do to want to “minimize”. But are the data on cancer and COVID corrected for the age of the patient and comorbidity? Best. Matti Aapro

Thank you Matti for the first Q. In the initial Lancet publication, comorbidity and age was not considered. But further studies showed that age, comorbidity and smoking are important risk factors for poor outcome with COVID. Oliver

Important Q about reimbursement of telemedicine? According to FMH website and factsheet, limitations are still the same as before pandemic: phone consultations are limited to 20-30 min. FMH asked BAG to change this limitation, BAG decision is pending.

yes, basically limitations apply to telemedicine. although BAG announced some relaxation of the rules during covid pandemic

To Solange, Which pts should not be treated due to fear of Covid? If any! Thanks BP

Very important workshop. Thank you. Timely and well documented. Solange nicely showed the ESMO work, but of course I want also to insist that supportive care is a key factor and ESMO helps also there: https://www.esmo.org/guidelines/cancer-patient-management-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/supportive-care-in-the-covid-19-era

Bernhard: none. The main fear I have it that we have impacted patients outcome due to our fear of delivering treatments based on improvised assumptions

Yes, very difficult to bill telemedicine- we do all our phone calls for free

Thank you Matti, there were also 2 interesting articles in medicalforum.ch on palliative care in the April 22 issue

Solange: do you have experience with reimbursement of pembrolizumab 400mg 6 wks for NSCLC in Switzerland? Its approved by FDA and EMA, but not in CH. Could this be a problem for reimbursement?

Ursula: What would you recommend to a 47y old patient with newly diagnosed non-seminomatous germ cell cancer stage 1 with vascular invasion (high-risk)?

Oliver: from the very first day, I have sent a full package to insurances with all refs existing INFORMING that I will double intervals of nivo and pembro. Only positive reactions, I can share the file for 2nd wave

Some insurances event told me that I can give double dose of both together ;-)

The slides will be available after the session online :-)

Aurelius: Stage I non-seminoma high risk: If the patient opts for adjuvant treatment after discussing in detail the guidelines and options of surveillance and adj treatment we have to recommend one cycle PEB and be careful with Bleomycin, no Bleomycin free alternative

Germ cell: curative. The same treatment you would give out of covid - no change. Manage your system and infrastructures, don’t negotiate/mitigate curative or clinically meaningful standards at all. In our country!

Fully agree!

I have also only received positive answers for Pembrolizumab 6 weeks for bladder from insurances in Ticino. We created a standard letter to facilitate the request.

It would be great to have a platform to share standard letters to health insurances especially if someone has collected all the references

Absolutely!

excellent idea, we can provide the italian version!

To Andreas Wicki: is SGMO/SSMO able to collect and share such letters (see above)?

indeed, if it is wished for we can collect all those letters at SGMO/SSOM and make them available to everybody - just let us know ("SGMO | Secretariat" <info@sgmo.ch>)

Thank you all for delaying dinner and staying until the end + pls send feedback to: info@samo-workshop.ch

If you have questions, please send them now, we will try and end very soon after the last talk - thank you for joining!

Thanks very much to you all for having participated into this meeting, it is a good experience or SAMO!In particular, many thanks, to the excellent presentations form all speakers, they deserve an applause.Have all an nice evening!