Abstract
INTRODUCTION: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak throughout the world has affected millions of people in many ways, putting a huge burden on the health care system. The ongoing outbreak of this respiratory disease has posed critical challenges to public health, research, and medical communities around the world. This study aimed at evaluating the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on patients with lung cancer in the People's Republic of China. METHODS: We collected data on 397 inpatients from a single center during 4 weeks of the pandemic (2020 group) and that of 2504 inpatients during the same period (4 wk) in the past 5 years (2015-2019 group). A questionnaire was used to investigate the medical demands of 803 patients with lung cancer at 65 hospitals in 20 provinces in the People's Republic of China during the pandemic. We evaluated the incidence data of COVID-19 in Guangdong to analyze the tendency of the pandemic and compared it with inpatient data. RESULTS: The number of hospitalizations and lung cancer-related operations had steadily increased from 2015 to 2019 but reduced by an average of 26.72% (133.8) and 57.18% (45.4) in 2020. The hospital capacity decreased by 28.00% (35 inpatient beds) during the pandemic period of infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The pandemic caused a greater impact on medical work related to lung cancer after the Chinese New Year holiday. Patients were most concerned about long waiting times for outpatient services, inpatient beds, physical examinations, or operations (406; 50.56%); the possibility of infection with the novel coronavirus (359; 44.71%); and the difficulties in getting to a hospital owing to transportation outages (279; 34.74%). Patients in stage I and II revealed having less fear about disease progression (14 [18.18%] and four [14.81%], respectively), had lower proportions of delayed medical arrangement (15 [19.48%] and six [22.22%], respectively), and complained less about complex treatment procedures (12 [15.58%] and five [18.52%], respectively). Patients in the high-infected area (345, 56.74%) complained more frequently about longer booking periods than those in the low-infected area (61, 31.28%). CONCLUSIONS: The treatment of patients with lung cancer has been affected by the pandemic to some extent. We provide suggestions on both clinical diagnosis and treatment strategies for lung cancer to optimize the process, given the urgency of the current circumstances. The demand for medical support among patients with lung cancer or other life-threatening diseases should be given sufficient attention, especially during the current COVID-19 outbreak.