COVID-19 in relation to hematologicevents and mortality in subset of inpatient cancer patients

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 is a newly diagnosed entity that has been identified for about 6 months. With the US now being theprevalent nation affected, we aimed to identify factors that were relevant to survival and hematologic events inCOVID patients. Our group had primarily been assessing COVID-19-confirmed patients as per PCR at OchsnerMedical Center in Louisiana;we primarily studied patients who were admitted between January 2020 to May 2020.Main events that are currently being studied include factors such as mortality, length of stay, and bleeding orthrombotic events. Secondary endpoints included factors such as influence on blood type and also amount oftransfusions required by these patients. Our overall analysis of 1,773 patients yielded a number of 60 patients whomwe were able to identify as having an active cancer diagnosis. This disproportionate number of patients may berelated to factors such as reluctance to visit the hospital among cancer patients, a phenomenon noted similarly inCardiology, where the number of admissions for cardiac causes had declined suddenly during this pandemictimeline. One half of our population was African American and included an even proportion of males and females.The age range of patients was between 35-93 years. The most common malignancies that were noted to co-occur with COVID-19 in our population seemed to be lung, prostate, and hematologic malignancies. Although finalanalyses regarding mortality are to be completed, the proportion of patients who had died with a diagnosis of cancer was around 50% per collection of our current data. Twenty three out of 60 (38%) patients required bloodtransfusions. In comparison to other reports that had reported bleeding events and thrombotic events, our reportrevealed a much lower rate of bleeding events (5/60) and thrombotic events (5/60). We plan to repeat our analysisto assess for any confounders in identifying these events, as noted, since some earlier literature had reportedbetween one quarter to two thirds of patients having a thrombotic event. Our analysis also looks at other descriptivevariables such as use of anticoagulant and antiplatelet agents, absolute counts of neutrophils and lymphocytes, platelets, and coagulation markers. Also, our assessment includes a study in assessment of any delays noted inchemotherapy dates for these patients.