4.5 Article

Patient recruitment into clinical studies of solid malignancies during the COVID-19 pandemic in a tertiary cancer center

Journal

NEOPLASIA
Volume 46, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/j.neo.2023.100946

Keywords

COVID-19; Trial recruitment; Oncology; Tertiary cancer center; Solid tumors

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Despite the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, clinical trial activities and patient recruitment at CCCZ remained high, with no significant differences observed compared to the pre-pandemic year.
Background and purpose: To analyze clinical trial activities and patient recruitment numbers into prospective clinical studies for solid malignancies during the COVID-19 pandemic in a tertiary cancer center.Materials and methods: Patient recruitment numbers in prospective clinical studies of solid malignancies were retrospectively analyzed for the years 2019 - 2021 at the Comprehensive Cancer Center Zurich (CCCZ). Changes in recruitment numbers were tested for association with organ-specific subunits, as well as organizational and treatment-related trial characteristics. To assess differences between categorical variables, Chi-squared test was used. For uni-and multivariate analysis, Cox proportional hazards were calculated. Results: In 2019, there were a total of 107 studies (registry trials, clinical phase I-III trials, and translational studies) recruiting 304 patients at the CCCZ. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, there were 120 and 125 active trials with a total recruitment of 355 and 666 patients, respectively. No significant differences between the subunits and study characteristics in changes of patient recruitment in clinical phase I-III trials were identified when the year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (2019) was compared to the first year of the pandemic (2020) and to 2020-2021.Conclusions: Despite healthcare systems around the world have experienced significant disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, data from our tertiary cancer center showed that clinical trial activities were maintained at a high level during the pandemic.

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