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Abstract
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). 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. 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. We did not observe a negative impact on the prognosis of patients with unresectable PDAC throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Published Version
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