Issues

The cover image is adapted from Figure 1 in the article, “Characteristics and outcomes of over 300,000 COVID-19 individuals with history of cancer in the United States and Spain,” by Roel and colleagues. The figure shows the prevalence of baseline conditions among patients with a history of cancer diagnosed and hospitalized with COVID-19. Given that COVID-19 is a novel disease, large descriptive studies are needed to inform public health strategies and clinical care, as well as to provide the groundwork for etiological studies. In addition, large studies with detailed information of medical conditions and health outcomes, such as thromboembolic events, in patients with cancer and COVID-19 are lacking to date. To fill that gap, the authors described the demographics, cancer subtypes, comorbidities and 23 outcomes of patients with a history of cancer and COVID-19. In addition, patients with a history of cancer hospitalized with COVID-19 were compared to: i) patients with a history of cancer diagnosed with COVID-19; and ii) patients with a history of cancer hospitalized with seasonal influenza (2017–2018) as a benchmark. Patients with a history of cancer and COVID-19 had multiple comorbidities and a high occurrence of COVID-19-related events. Hematological malignancies were frequent. For more information, see the article beginning on page 1884.