The mortality rate of COVID-19 was high in cancer patients: a retrospective single-center study

Abstract

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has quickly turned into a global pandemic with close to 5 million cases and more than 320,000 deaths. Cancer patients constitute a group that is expected to be at risk and poor prognosis in COVID pandemic. We aimed to investigate how cancer patients are affected by COVID-19 infection, its clinical course and the factors affecting mortality.

Methods: In our single-center retrospective study, we included cancer patients with laboratory confirmed COVID-19 in our hospital. Demographic, clinical, treatment, and laboratory data were obtained from electronic medical records. Logistic regression methods were used to investigate risk factors associated with in-hospital death.

Results: In the hospital, 4489 patients were hospitalized with COVID infection and 77 were cancer patients. The mean age of cancer patients was 61.9 ± 10.9 and 44 of them were male (62%). While the mortality rate in non-cancer patients was 1.51% (n = 68), this rate was significantly higher in cancer patients, 23.9% (n = 17). The stage of the disease, receiving chemotherapy in the last 30 days also lymphopenia, elevated troponin I, D-dimer, CRP, and CT findings were associated with severe disease and mortality. Severe lung involvement (OR = 22.9, p = 0.01) and lymphopenia (OR = 0.99, p = 0.04) are the most important factors influencing survival in logistic regression.

Conclusions: The disease is more severe in cancer patients and mortality is significantly higher than non-cancer patients. These data show that it may be beneficial to develop dynamic prevention, early diagnosis and treatment strategies for this vulnerable group of patients who are affected by the infection so much.

Keywords: COVID-19; Cancer; Mortality rate; Retrospective case study.

Fig. 1

The survival proportions according to chest CT findings

Fig. 2

The survival proportions according to pretreatment lymphocyte counts