GM COVID Cancer
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Risk of COVID-19 related hospital admission and death in cancer patients in Greater Manchester.
IRAS ID
289579
Contact name
Corinne Faivre-Finn
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The Christie NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 30 days
Research summary
Research Summaru
During the initial wave of COVID-19 infections in the UK, most cancer patients were regarded as being at extremely high risk of hospitalisation and death due to COVID-19 and were therefore told to shield. This is a sensible precaution, but data to support shielding are lacking. While some studies have been carried out that examine the risk of death from COVID-19 in cancer patients, these have been limited to patients hospitalised for COVID-19 or attending hospital for other reasons. No studies to date have examined the risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19 in all cancer patients, and whether certain treatments are associated with death or hospitalisation within this population.
This project aims to determine the risks and factors associated with COVID-19 diagnosis, and COVID-19 hospital admissions and death, in cancer patients and compared to those in non-cancer patients of otherwise similar health status.
This will provide an overall picture of COVID-19 risk in all GM patients with cancer, which can be used to inform individual management decisions for cancer patients. It will also allow the identification of groups of cancer patients at high risk of hospital admission and death from COVID-19, permitting the tailoring of advice to their GPs and oncologists regarding treatment and shielding.
The study will have two cohorts. The first includes all patients diagnosed with cancer since 1st March 2015 (with the exception of those who died prior to 1st February 2020). The second cohort will include age- and sex-matched individuals indentified at random from the pool of individuals registered with a GP in Greater Manchester and with no record of cancer at the index date (1st February 2020).
All data will be pseudonymised.
Summary of Results
During the initial wave of COVID-19 infections in the UK, most cancer patients were regarded as being at extremely high risk of hospitalisation and death due to COVID-19 and were therefore told to shield. This is a sensible precaution, but data to support shielding are lacking. While some studies have been carried out that examine the risk of death from COVID-19 in cancer patients, these have been limited to patients hospitalised for COVID-19 or attending hospital for other reasons. No studies to date have examined the risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19 in all cancer patients, and whether certain treatments are associated with death or hospitalisation within this population.
This project aimed to determine the risks and factors associated with COVID-19 diagnosis, and COVID-19 hospital admissions and death, in cancer patients and compared to those in non-cancer patients of otherwise similar health status.
Unfortunately, the linkage provided by Graphnet to the Christie data was not of a high enough quality to be able to trust it (e.g. when looking at all the patients in the Greater Manchester Care Record with a cancer diagnosis code, they only represented about 30% of the people in the Christie dataset which we didn't think was likely). After numerous attempts (over the period of ~1 year) to ask Graphnet to remedy the issue we abandoned hopes of linking Christie and GP data. An audit of which of the project aims could be met using just GP data showed that there were insufficient to be of interest.
This was the first study that linked data, and the experience and lessons learnt from this study was vital for developing a better understanding of the linking process and the importance of evaluating the quality of the data prior and after linkage that will help shape future studies and form strategies to support data linkage in the future.
REC name
Wales REC 1
REC reference
21/WA/0240
Date of REC Opinion
9 Aug 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion