key: cord-0743604-ssbreehh
authors: Kabarriti, Rafi; Brodin, N. Patrik; Maron, Maxim I.; Tomé, Wolfgang A.; Halmos, Balazs; Guha, Chandan; Kalnicki, Shalom; Garg, Madhur K.; Ohri, Nitin
title: Reply to Chowdhary et al
date: 2020-08-03
journal: Adv Radiat Oncol
DOI: 10.1016/j.adro.2020.06.020
sha: 402a9f23cb47b80b9270554e01b37edfacf3fcd2
doc_id: 743604
cord_uid: ssbreehh

nan

To the Editor:

We would like to thank Chowdhary et al for their constructive comments 1 regarding our recent publication describing mortality rates in a cohort of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) with a history of radiotherapy. 2 We wholeheartedly agree that additional potential risk factors, including comorbid medical conditions, 3 should be included in future analyses on this topic. We are currently sharing patient data with large national and international consortia 4, 5 to enable more definitive analyses.

To try to address other concerns about our analysis, we now present updated data. Additional deaths have unfortunately occurred in our cohort of 107 patients, including deaths more than 14 days after COVID-19 diagnosis. The actuarial 14-day survival rate is now 75%, and the 45-day survival rate is now 61%. Figure 1 depicts the relationship between primary cancer type, mean lung radiation therapy dose, and vital status in our data set. Figure 2 contains updated Kaplan-Meier survival curves.

We invite readers to make their own interpretations of our data. We find it plausible that patients with a history of significant lung irradiation may be at increased risk for complications when faced with a serious viral pneumonia. Until more conclusive data are available, we hope that all patients with thoracic cancers/tumors receive appropriate guidance and social support to minimize their risk of contracting COVID-19. 

regard to Kabarriti et al. Adv Radiat Oncol

Extent of prior lung irradiation and mortality in COVID-19 patients with a cancer history

Case fatality rate of cancer patients with COVID-19 in a New York hospital system

The COVID-19 & Cancer Consortium (CCC19): A collaborative effort to understand the effects of COVID-19 on patients with cancer

Thoracic Cancers International COVID-19 collaboration

Sources of support: This work had no specific funding. Disclosures: none.