Abstract
BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on healthcare, including cancer management. This study aimed to investigate the prognostic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, throughout its duration, on patient care for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). METHODS: We collected clinical data of patients with unresectable PDAC who underwent palliative chemotherapy at five medical facilities in Fukushima, Japan. The patients were divided into two groups: group A (nonpandemic cohort) and group B (pandemic cohort). Survival analysis was performed for progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) via the Kaplan‒Meier method with the log-rank test. RESULTS: In total, 249 patients were selected for the analysis. Patients in Group B had significantly greater serum CA19-9 levels and proportions of patients selected for combination therapy; however, we did not find significant differences between the two groups in PFS (Group A vs. Group B: 5.6 months vs. 4.4 months, HR = 0.82 (95% CI, 0.6-1.1), p = 0.17) or OS (14.8 months vs. 12.3 months, HR = 0.81 (95% CI, 0.7-1.3), p = 0.81) in the survival analysis. CONCLUSIONS: We did not observe a negative impact on the prognosis of patients with unresectable PDAC throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.