COVID-19 in Patients with Melanoma: A Single-Institution Study.

Simple Summary: The complexity of possible interactions of baseline patient characteristics and cancer-related factors with the course of COVID-19 is illustrated by the controversial results of studies that assess the severity and outcome of COVID-19 in cancer patients. The present research is a single-institution analysis of 121 melanoma patients with COVID-19. The purpose of our study is to characterize the spectrum of severity and outcome of COVID-19 in melanoma patients. The 30-day mortality rate after COVID-19 infection was low (4.2%). Melanoma stage, treatment receipt and treatment type had no impact on COVID-19 severity and hospitalization risk. Vaccinated patients experienced milder disease compared to the unvaccinated ones. Heart failure and the time period of the infection were independent predictors of severity. The results of the study expand the evidence on the safety of melanoma treatments in light of COVID-19 and will be useful to clinicians treating melanoma patients with COVID-19. We conducted a single-center, non-interventional retrospective study of melanoma patients with COVID-19 (1 March 2020 until 17 March 2023). The cohort was further divided into three groups according to the periods of SARS-CoV-2 variant dominance in Greece. We recorded demographics, comorbidities, vaccination data, cancer diagnosis/stage, types of systemic melanoma treatments, date of COVID-19 diagnosis and survival. We identified 121 patients. The vast majority (87.6%) had advanced disease (stages III or IV). A total of 80.1% of the patients were receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor-based therapies, 92.5% had asymptomatic/mild COVID-19 and 7.4% had moderate/severe/critical disease, while 83.5% contracted COVID-19 during the third period of the pandemic. Sixteen patients (13.2%) were hospitalized for COVID-19 with a median length of stay of 12 days (range: 1–55 days). Advanced age, heart failure, number of comorbidities (≤1 vs. >1), vaccination status and the time period of the infection correlated with more severe COVID-19, whereas only heart failure and time period were independently correlated with severity. The 30-day mortality rate after COVID-19 was 4.2%. With a median follow-up of 340 days post-COVID-19, 17.4% of patients were deceased. In this cohort of melanoma patients with COVID-19, the 30-day mortality rate was low. There was no association between melanoma stage, treatment receipt and type of treatment with COVID-19 severity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]