Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on routine oncology versus emergency care at a high volume cancer centre

Abstract

Background: We investigated the influence of population-wide COVID-19 lockdown measures implemented on 16, March 2020 on routine and emergency care of cancer outpatients at a tertiary care cancer centre in Vienna, Austria. Methods: We compared the number/visits of cancer outpatients receiving oncological therapies at the oncologic day clinic (DC) and admissions at the emergency department (ED) of our institution in time periods before (pre-lockdown period: 1 January – 15 March 2020) and after (post-lockdown period: 16 March– 31 May 2020) lockdown implementation with the respective reference periods of 2018 and 2019. Additionally, we analysed Emergency Severity Index (ESI) score of unplanned cancer patient presentations to the ED in the same post-lockdown time periods. Patient outcome was described as 3-month mortality rate (3-MM). Results: In total, 16 703 visits at the DC and 2664 patient visits for the respective time periods were recorded at the ED. No decrease in patient visits was observed at the DC after lockdown implementation (P =.351), whereas a substantial decrease in patient visits at the ED was seen (P