gms | German Medical Science

Objective: COVID-19 is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV2 virus. Since its outbreak in December 2019 starting in Wuhan/China, it has caused a global pandemic. As part of the measures undertaken to tackle COViD-19 effects in Germany, in- and outpatient treatment has been restricted to a greater or lesser extent since early 2020 with postponement of non-urgent treatments. We hypothesized that there may have also been delays in the diagnosis of glioblastoma, resulting in larger tumor volumes at presentation.

Methods: We analyzed all patients with newly diagnosed and histologically proven glioblastoma who presented to our DKG-certified neuro-oncology center between 1-2018 and 12-2021. Patients were stratified between pre-COVID (2018/2019) and COVID (2019/2020) era. Demographic as well as treatment related data were collected and compared between the two groups. Preoperative tumor volumes were calculated using the Brainlab software.

Results: Data of 115 patients (pre-covid: 58; covid: 57) were analyzed. There was a male preponderance (n=66; 57.4%). Median age was 67 years (range: 33-83 years) and did not differ between groups (p=0.55). The majority of patients (n=59, 51.3%) underwent tumor resection while the others had biopsy. At the time of radiological diagnosis, tumor volumes in the COVID group were larger than in the pre-COVID group (median: 31.5 vs. 25.6 ccm; Figure 1 [Fig. 1]), although this difference did not reach statistical significance (p=0.21).

Conclusion: Although not reaching statistical significance, we observed larger tumor volumes of patients harboring glioblastomas at first presentation, possibly due to delayed diagnostics. We propose that the DGCN and its neuro-oncology subsection lead a multicenter initiative to further investigate the effects of COVID-19 on glioblastoma diagnosis, treatment and outcome.