Abstract

INTRODUCTION

To determine the characteristics of patients who received chemotherapy in the pandemic center under Covid 19 pandemic conditions and to investigate the changes in oncology practice.

METHODS

The data of patients receiving chemotherapy in our center between 01.04.2020 and 20.05.2020 and who were not diagnosed with neutropenic fever or Covid 19 in at least two consecutive visits were retrospectively analyzed. Wilcoxon and Mc-Nemar tests were used for comparison of numerical and categorical variables, respectively. We reported two-sided p value and <0.05 were considered statistically significant

RESULTS

A total of 98 patients were included in the study. Median follow-up time was 20 days in the whole group (6-48). The median age of the patients was 59 (28-82), and there were 52 (53%) male patients and 46 (47%) female patients. While number of patients who received granulocyte-colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) at the first visit was 50 (51%), number of patients who received G-CSF at the second visit was 37 (38%) (p = 0.035). Cough (8% vs 1%, p = 0.039), sputum (8% vs 0%, p = 0.016) and fatigue (18% vs 8%, p = 0.004) were found to be more common in the second visit compared to the first visit.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

It was shown that patients could receive chemotherapy without any problems by examining for Covid 19 symptoms and with normal limits of laboratory. In addition, the rates of G-CSF use were found to be higher than the rates in the literature compared to the pre-pandemic.