Real-world Scenario of Patients with Lung Cancer Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic in China

Abstract Background Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak throughout the world has affected billions of people in many way putting a huge burden on the healthcare system. The ongoing outbreak of this respiratory disease has posed critical challenges for the public health, research, and medical communities around the world. This study aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on patients with lung cancer in China. Methods We collected data on 397 inpatients from a single center during 4 weeks of the epidemic time (2020 group), and that of 2504 inpatients during the same period (4 weeks) in last 5 years (2015-2019 group). A questionnaire was used to investigate medical demands among 803 patients with lung cancer at 65 hospitals from 20 provinces in China during the epidemic. We evaluate 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 surgeries had steadily increased in 2015-2019 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 SARS-CoV-2 epidemic period. The epidemic caused a greater impact on medical work related to lung cancer after the Chinese New Year holiday. Patients were most concerned about longer waiting time for outpatient services, inpatient beds, physical examinations, or surgeries (406; 50.56%), the possibility of infection with the novel coronavirus (359; 44.71%), difficulties in getting to a hospital due to transportation outages (279; 34.74%). Patients in stage I and II showed less fear about disease progression (14, 18.18%; 4, 14.81%), lower proportions of delayed medical arrangement (15, 19.48%; 6, 22.22%) and less complain about complex treatment procedures (12, 15.58%, 5, 18.52%). Patients in high-infected area (345, 56.74%) complained more frequently about longer booking periods than in low-infected area (61, 31.28%). Conclusion Treatment of patients with lung cancer has been affected by the epidemic to some extent. We provide suggestions on both clinical diagnosis and treatment strategies of lung cancer to optimize the process regarding to the currently urgent 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.