It is unknown how COVID-19 infection would affect patients with gynecologic cancers. Researchers set out to document the clinical pathways, treatment modifications, and short-term clinical outcomes of COVID-19 co-infected patients undergoing gynecologic oncology in the United States. The COVID-19 and Gynecologic Cancer Registry was established by the Society of Gynecologic Oncology to record the clinical histories of women with gynecologic cancers who have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Factors associated with hospitalization and mortality in the first 30 days after a diagnosis of COVID-19 were analyzed using logistic regression models.
There were records for 348 patients at 7 hospitals. A total of 125 patients (36%) with COVID-19 diagnosis had current cancer. About 2/8th of infected patients had their treatment postponed (n = 88) or stopped entirely (n = 10), most often those undergoing chemotherapy (53/88) or surgery (32/88) within the past few weeks. Non-White race (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 3.93, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.06-7.50) and active malignancy (aOR = 2.34, 95% CI 1.30-4.20) were also related to an elevated risk of hospitalization beyond age, performance status, diabetes, and specific COVID symptoms.
Complications from COVID-19 were responsible for the deaths of 8% of hospitalized patients (8/101) and 5% of the entire group (17/348) within 30 days of diagnosis. Patients with gynecologic cancer diagnosed with COVID-19 are at increased risk for hospitalization, delays in anti-cancer therapy, and mortality. Patients with gynecologic cancer who were diagnosed with COVID-19 had a mortality rate of 1 in 20 within the first 30 days. COVID-19 hospitalizations, a proxy for disease severity, show racial differences. Long-term results and the influence of race need more research.
Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0090825822018376
