Few patients had COVID-19
“It was striking to me to see that so few patients developed COVID-19 prior to radiotherapy or during radiotherapy,” Dr. Lievens noted. “This is actually something that we’ve also experienced in our setting.”
Indeed, just 15 patients (1%) were diagnosed with COVID-19, 10 of whom were diagnosed before receiving radiotherapy.
Dr. Banfill observed that the COVID-19 diagnosis had been “a reasonable time” before the patients started radiotherapy, and some had been diagnosed with lung cancer as a result of having a chest x-ray for suspected COVID-19.
Of the four patients who were diagnosed during treatment, two had their radiotherapy interrupted as a result.
The low COVID-19 rate is perhaps a result of the protective measures recommended in the United Kingdom, such as advising patients to shield from others, Dr. Banfill said.
Are changes to practice likely to hold?
“Part of the reason we actually stopped the data collection in October was that people were starting to go, ‘Well, is this actually a change?’ because they’d been doing it for 6 months,” Dr. Banfill observed during the discussion session.
“It was becoming almost normal for some of these hypofractionated changes. I think there is potential for these to become more embedded going forward,” she said. Data on how these changes might affect patients in the long term is going to be the focus of a future analysis.
“There is ongoing data collection on recurrence and survival and toxicity, which will hopefully provide more information on the outcomes of this patient group,” Dr. Banfill said.
The COVID-RT Lung project is supported by the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre. Dr. Banfill and Dr. Lievens reported no relevant conflicts of interest.