Survival in pediatric patients with cancer during the covid-19 pandemic: Scoping systematic review

Abstract

Background: Coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 has currently affected 8,015,502 million people worldwide with global mortality around 5%. Information in pediatric cancer patients is still limited, but it is emerging day by day. The objec-tive of this scoping review was to analyze the available data associated with COVID-19 infection and mortality in pediatric cancer patients and to provide useful information to plan and design strategies in this group. Methods: A search was conducted, and eight articles were obtained for qualitative analysis; 110 patients were included, all from cross-sectional studies. At the time of publication, all the analyzed documents reported no deaths associated with COVID-19. Results: According to the information, COVID-19 infection appears to be less severe in the pediatric population in comparison with adults and does not appear to be a cause of mortality in patients with childhood cancer. Conclusions: Given the nature of preliminary reports and a short follow-up in cancer patients, it is necessary to have medium-and long-term follow-up studies to determine the effects of infection and modifications to the treatments of these patients.