Changes in hospital mortality in patients with cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic
Lancet Oncology, 2024
The ISARIC4C have established that people with cancer have a higher risk of mortality from COVID-19 than those without cancer. Patients younger than 50 years with cancer treatment have the highest relative risk of death. Continued action is needed to mitigate the poor outcomes in patients with cancer, such as through optimising vaccination, long-acting passive immunisation, and early access to therapeutics. These findings underscore the importance of the ISARIC-WHO pandemic preparedness initiative.
This follows successful conduct of prospective cohort study of patients aged older than 19 years and admitted to 306 health-care facilities in the UK with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. These patients were enrolled in the International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infections Consortium (ISARIC) WHO Clinical Characterisation Protocol (CCP) across the UK from April 23, 2020, to Feb 28, 2022; this analysis included all patients in the complete dataset when the study closed. The primary outcome was 30-day in-hospital mortality, comparing patients on cancer treatment and those without cancer.
In-hospital mortality decreased for all patients during the pandemic but was higher for patients on cancer treatment than for those without cancer throughout the study period.