Cochrane GNOC has published a list of resources and useful links on COVID-19 for patients and health professionals

COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) - Cochrane Gynaecological, Neuro-oncology and Orphan Cancers

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is caused by a new strain of Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) discovered in 2019, and not previously identified in humans. Common symptoms include fever, cough, and shortness of breath. On March 11 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the current COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic.

For authoritative information about the science underpinning the epidemic see: https://coronavirusexplained.ukri.org/en.

At this time, it is more important than ever to work together. Cochrane GNOC have gathered important resources, guidance and advice statements from international organizations and societies related to COVID-19, and the management of patients with gynaecological cancers or neuro-oncology. We will publish links on this page as they become available. If you would like us to link to a resource that is not currently on our list, please contact us.

Cochrane has launched a COVID-19 Study Register https://covid-19.cochrane.org/ This is a freely-available, continually-updated, annotated reference collection of human studies on COVID-19, including interventional, observational, diagnostic, prognostic, epidemiological, and economic designs. References are added from three primary data sources: ClinicalTrials.gov, WHO's International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP), and PubMed. Secondary data sources are currently under evaluation for unique content and data quality. New records will be added continually to enrich the data to improve usability.

Guidance across themes:

Guidance for Gynaecological Cancers:

The following are largely UK-based guidance for management of gynaecological oncology conditions, designed to support clinicians with regard to decision-making when weighing up risks and balances of treating patients versus increased risks form COVID-19. 

Specific support for patients can be accessed through gynaecological cancer charities.  Please get in touch with the team with details for other non-UK-based charities able to offer telephone support at this time.

Professional guidelines/frameworks during COVID-19 pandemic:

o   https://www.bsge.org.uk/news/management-of-women-with-abnormal-uterine-bleeding-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/

o   https://www.bsge.org.uk/news/joint-rcog-bsge-statement-on-gynaecological-laparoscopic-procedures-and-covid-19/

Guidance for Neuro-oncology:

Guidance and reference documents for patients

Guidance and reference documents for health professionals: 

Cochrane evidence

1. The Cochrane Library: Cochrane as a whole is undertaking a comprehensive programme of work to provide evidence for those caring for Covid-19 patients, and has made the Cochrane Library temporarily freely available to all (https://www.cochranelibrary.com/ ).

2. Cochrane resources and news: Cochrane has an extensive collection of resources related to COVID-19 and these are available here (https://www.cochrane.org/coronavirus-covid-19-cochrane-resources-and-news ).

3. Cochrane Special Collections relating to coronavirus have been developed:

4. Cochrane COVID Rapid Reviews. Cochrane is engaging with a range of stakeholders to build a bank of important questions emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and the Brazilian Ministry of Health. The first 60 questions underwent a very early prioritisation process to allow work to begin immediately on urgent reviews. The remaining questions will undergo a rapid prioritisation process with stakeholders. The list of suggested topics can be found here. Some of these are underway, others will be prioritized for later completion.  If you would like to submit a question on coronavirus, you can do so here (https://covidrapidreviews.cochrane.org/submit ).

Commonly asked questions to Cochrane about COVID-19 rapid reviews:

  •          How do I subscribe to the distribution list for future priority setting?  Please send an email to support@cochrane.org who will add you to the distribution list. The priority setting will be re-run at regular intervals as new questions become available.
  •          How do I volunteer to be involved in the rapid reviews? If you have a review team which would be willing to take ownership for a rapid review, please contact covidrapidreviews@cochrane.org . We will be encouraging rapid review author teams to use Cochrane Task Exchange (https://taskexchange.cochrane.org/) to post tasks that require additional support.
  •          How do I see which rapid reviews Cochrane members are already working on? You can search the rapid review question (https://covidrapidreviews.cochrane.org/search/site )bank to identify review questions which are in progress and those which are available to author teams.
  •           What is a Cochrane rapid review? Rapid reviews can take many forms. The Cochrane Rapid Reviews Methods Group has proposed the following definition: “A form of knowledge synthesis that accelerates the process of conducting a traditional systematic review through streamlining or omitting specific methods to produce evidence for stakeholders in a resource-efficient manner.” More information is available here (https://covidrapidreviews.cochrane.org/process ).

General guidance on COVID-19:

COVID-19 trials in-progress and data from trials

For a register of COVID-19-related trials that are in-progress and may – or may not – have yet published results (links are included when results are available) please see Covid-19 TrialsTracker (http://covid19.trialstracker.net/index.html ).

Cochrane's partner Vivli (https://vivli.org/vivli-covid-19-portal /) is collecting and sharing data from COVID-19-related clinical trials (published data and individual patient data from published and unpublished trials); find out more here (https://vivli.org/vivli-covid-19-portal/ ).