Impact of COVID -19 in cancer patients on severity of disease and fatal outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND AND AIMSBACKGROUND

Currently there is limited knowledge on cancer and COVID-19; we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the impact of cancer on serious events including ICU admission rate and mortality in COVID 19.

METHODS

PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Clinical Trials were searched on April 16, 2020, to extract published articles that reported the outcomes of cancer in COVID-19 patients. The search terms were "coronavirus" and "clinical characteristics" with no language or time restrictions. We identified 512 published results and 13 studies were included in the analysis.

RESULTS

There were 3775 patients, of whom 63 (1·66%) had a cancer. The pooled estimates of ICU admission in COVID 19 patients with and without cancer were 40% versus 8·42%.The odds ratio of ICU admission rates between the cancer and non-cancer groups was 2.88 with a 95% CI of 1·18 to 7·01 (p = 0·026). The pooled estimates of death rate in COVID -19 patients with and without cancer were 20·83% versus 7·82%. The odds ratio of death rates between the cancer and non-cancer groups was 2.25 with a 95% CI ranging from 0·71 to 7·10 with p value of 0·166. The pooled prevalence of cancer patients was 2% (95 CI 1-4).

CONCLUSIONS

Presence of cancer in COVID-19 leads to higher risk of developing serious events i.e. ICU admission, mechanical ventilation and mortality. The presence of cancer has a significant impact on mortality rate in COVID-19 patients.