LAUSR

The COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has led to unprecedented challenges in providing cancer care to patients all over the world. Compared to the general population, it is assumed that patients with hematologic malignancies are more susceptible to develop viral infections like COVID-19 and will experience more severe symptoms and complications given their immunocompromised status. METHODSThisretrospective chart review included 57 patients who had multiple myeloma (MM), tested positive for COVID-19 and were hospitalized between 1/1/2020 until 5/1/2021. We report epidemiological, clinical, and laboratory characteristics along with outcomes.RESULTS 57 MM patients were included in the study. The mean age of our cohort was 70.54 years with a standard deviation of 11.65, and 57.89% (n=33) patients were male. 45.61% (n=26) were non-smokers, 22.81% (n=13) were currently smokers and 31.58% (n=18) were former smokers. While the odds of hospitalization were not signi fi cantly increased with age (OR 1.03 95% CI 0.98-1.09, p=0.163 ), the odds of death were slightly increased with age, and the results were statistically signi fi cant (OR 1.07 95% 1.00 -1.14, p=0.03 ). Race, ethnicity, gender and BMI, smoking status and fl u/pneumovax vaccination did not have any effect on the odds of neither hospitalization nor death. Between all comorbidities that were present in our cohort, none signi fi cantly affected the odds of hospitalization. However, patients with heart failure had higher odds of death (OR 4.11 95% CI 0.98-17.22, p=0.05 ), and those with asthma had lower odds of death (OR 0.08 95% CI 0.009-0.67, p=0.02 ). Between all multiple myeloma subtypes, no speci fi c subtype affected the odds of death, and only the light chain disease signi fi cantly reduced the odds of hospitalization (OR 0.11 95% CI 0.02-0.72, p=0.021 ). No speci fi c medication or treatment regimen in fl uenced the odds of hospitalization or death. As for pretesting biochemical parameters, elevated blood urea nitrogen signi fi cantly increased the odds of hospitalization (OR 1.08 95% CI 1.01-1.16, p=0.023 ), while elevated bilirubin decreased those odds (OR 0.19 95% CI 0.05-0.79, p=0.022 ). On the other side, elevated pretesting procalcitonin increased the odds of death (OR 3.77 95% CI 1.09-13.07, p=0.036 ), unlike elevated albumin levels that lowered the odds of death (OR 0.41 95% CI 0.19-0.84, p=0.015 ). On admission, elevated LDH was the only parameter that signi fi cantly increased the odds of death (OR 1.01 95% CI 1-1.02, p=0.024 ).