Ahmedabad: Covid hunt unearths cancer, TB

AHMEDABAD: Dr Rupal Manghani, lady medical officer with AMC, had contracted Covid in May as she went door-to-door convincing coronavirus patients to get admitted in hospitals and prevent the virus from spreading like wildfire. Ironically, she suffered a major shocker when a CT scan carried out to ascertain the severity of Covid-19 in her lungs threw up a breast tumor which turned out malignant.


The only silver lining in this dark cloud was that breast cancer was in the first stage. Dr Rupal got her breast removed after recuperating from both Covid-19 and cancer and she is back at work, sending teams to people ailing from coronavirus.

With HRCT scans becoming common practise in Covid-19 pandemic, first to diagnose and of late to ascertain scope of lung damage in Covid-19 cases, doctors are reporting incidental diagnosis of serious ailments like cancer of lungs, breast, thyroid glands, TB nodules and in some cases even liver abscess.

Senior oncologist Dr Somesh Chandra said he consulted three cases of lung cancer in the past four months wherein patients were diagnosed to have malignancy during CT scan for Covid-19.

Dr Chandra said all three cases were diagnosed in the first stage of cancer, a rare occurrence as conventionally majority patients are picked up in the second or third stage.

Traces of TB found in 7% of cases

Experts said most patients diagnosed with cancer were young, had no symptoms or prolonged risk factors. Radiologist Dr Amit Gupta said his imaging centre has found seven cases of breast cancer and 20 cases of lung cancer during HRCTs . “Traces of TB were found in almost 7% cases. . Senior radiologist Dr Hemant Patel said nodules in thyroid gland were also found aplenty.