COVID‐19 in patients with hematological malignancies: A retrospective case series
María Stefanía Infante, Isabel González-Gascón-y-Marín, Carolina Muñoz‐Novas, Juan Churruca, María Ángeles Foncillas, Elena Landete, Karen Marín, Pablo Ryan, José‐Ángel Hernández‐Rivas
Abstract
Spain, with more than 249.000 cases and 28.363 deaths as of July 1st, 2020, has one of the highest burdens of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) worldwide. nce its first identification in China in December 2019, several reports have been published describing epidemiological and clinical characteristics of patients with COVID-19, with an overall mortality rate ranging from 1.4% to 2.3%, that can increase up to 22.4%-24.5% in hospitalized patients. tients with cancer have a higher susceptibility to infections due to their immunosuppression state caused by the malignancy itself or by antineoplastic treatments. Specifically, infections caused by community respiratory viruses had been associated with poor outcome in patients with hematological malignancies. Few data are available on hematologic patients and COVID-19 infection, with discordant results, probably due to the small sample size of the studies.