An LSU Health New Orleans oncologist helps author a study showing 13 to 16 percent of cancer patients with a confirmed case of COVID-19 will die within 30 days of diagnosis.
An Ochsner study of Jefferson and Orleans Parish estimated a 1.63 percent average infection mortality rate. LSU Health Clinical Medicine Professor Suki Subbiah says cancer patients are far more vulnerable.
“it maybe be due to factors that are related to their cancers such as the type of cancer they have, the status of their cancer, and how functional they are,” says Subbiah.
Adjusting for being male, former smoker status, age, and comorbidities further increased the death rate.
Subbiah says this data makes it clear cancer patients and cancer doctors should take extra caution when assessing whether a patient needs to come in for treatment.
“You have to weigh the risk and the benefit of potentially contracting coronavirus by going to the hospital versus not going and having adverse outcomes from your cancer,” says Subbiah.
Subbiah says the study suggests cancer doctors familiarize themselves with this data.
“We need to be very clear about who we are going to see in the clinic or hospital versus who we could safely offer a virtual visit to,” says Subbiah.
The data was drawn and studied from the Cancer Consortium Registry, a data center created in March to study cancer patients with COVID-19.
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