ARRS E-Poster Illustrates COVID-19 Impact on Lung Cancer Screening in the Bronx

A scientific e-poster presented at the 2022 ARRS Annual Meeting highlighted how the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected inhabitants of underserved communities.

“Our lung cancer screening program serves a diverse, impoverished inner-city population,” said presenting author Ali Farhat of the Bronx’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, NY. “The present study evaluates the impact of COVID-19 infection in this cohort.”

Between March 2020 and June 2021, Farhat and colleagues retrospectively reviewed charts for COVID-19 infection—positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR, positive antibody test, documented infection in electronic medical record—as well as for hospitalization and mortality. The initial 3-month data were presented at the 2021 ARRS All-Virtual Annual Meeting. Noting both demographics and comorbidities, bivariate analysis evidenced a significance level of p < 0.05.

“Approximately 9% of our diverse inner-city lung cancer screening cohort developed COVID-19 during the first 16 months of the pandemic,” Farhat et al. continued. Almost one-third of infected patients were hospitalized, and mortality measured 6.9% among infected patients. Ultimately, mortality and hospitalization were significantly associated with multiple comorbidities.