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Background & objectives: High mortality has been observed in the cancer population affected with COVID-19 during this pandemic. We undertook this study to determine the characteristics and outcomes of cancer patients with COVID-19 and assessed the factors predicting outcome. Methods: Patients of all age groups with a proven history of malignancy and a recent diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection based on nasal/nasopharyngeal reverse transcriptase (RT)-PCR tests were included. Demographic, clinical and laboratory variables were compared between survivors and non-survivors groups, with respect to observed mortality. Results: Between May 11 and August 10, 2020, 134 patients were included from the three centres and observed mortality was 17.1 per cent. The median age was 53 yr (interquartile range 39-61 yr) and thirty four patients (25%) were asymptomatic. Solid tumours accounted for 69.1 per cent and breast cancer was the most common tumour type (20%). One hundred and five patients (70.5%) had received chemotherapy within the past four weeks and 25 patients (19.3%) had neutropenia at presentation. On multivariate analysis, age [odds ratio (OR) 7.99 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.18-54.00); P=0.033], haemoglobin [OR 6.28 (95% CI 1.07-37.04); P=0.042] neutrophil–lymphocyte ratio [OR 12.02 (95% CI 2.08-69.51); P=0.005] and baseline serum albumin [OR 18.52 (95% CI 2.80-122.27); P=0.002], were associated with higher mortality. Recent chemotherapy, haematological tumours type and baseline neutropenia did not affect the outcome. Interpretation & conclusions: Higher mortality in moderate and severe infections was associated with baseline organ dysfunction and elderly age. Significant proportion of patients were asymptomatic and might remain undetected
RESUMO
Background. Survival of myeloma patients has improved considerably in the past decade. However, limited data are available on their long-term outcome. We analysed the data of 225 consecutive patients who underwent autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) at our centre. Methods. Between April 1990 and December 2013, a total of 225 patients with multiple myeloma (median age 53 years, range 27–67 years, 69.3% men) underwent ASCT. High-dose melphalan 200 mg/m2 was used for conditioning. Before transplant, the patients received induction therapy with novel agents (thalidomide and dexamethasone, or lenalidomide and dexamethasone, or bortezomib and dexamethasone); or vincristine, doxorubicin, dexamethasone; or alkylating agents (vincristine, melphalan, cyclophosphamide and prednisolone; or melphalan and prednisolone). The response to transplant was evaluated using the European Bone Marrow Transplant criteria, and an intention-to-treat analysis was done. Results. Four-fifths (79.6%) of our patients had Durie Salmon Stage (DSS) IIIA and nearly a quarter (24%) of them had International Stage III disease. Before the transplant, 80.4% of patients had chemosensitive disease. The median interval from diagnosis to transplant was 10 months (range 2–128 months). Following ASCT, 197 (87.5%) patients responded. Complete response was obtained in 54.7%, very good partial response in 19% and partial response in 13.8%. At a median follow-up of 90 months (range 18–266 months), the median progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were 32 and 85.5 months, respectively. The estimated PFS and OS at 10 years were 29.7% and 43.6%, respectively. On multivariate analysis, the presence of extramedullary disease (HR 3.05, p<0.001), and ISS III (HR 0.50, p<0.02)