Prevalence of Malignancy and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease among Patients with COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Background and aim: Prevalence malignancy and COPD in the patients infected by COVID-19 has been considered to be of high importance for the health-care laborers. Therefore, the present systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to determine the malignancy prevalence and the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease amongst COVID-19 patients.
Materials and methods: Some electronic databases, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, and ISI have been used to perform systematic literature in May 2020. Then, a software program (Endnote X8) has been utilized for managing the electronic titles. Two reviewers blind and independently extracted data from abstracts and full-text studies. Moreover, the prevalence of malignancies and COPD with 95% CI has been estimated via the inverse variance method and fix effect model of meta-analysis. Also, heterogeneity has been assessed with I2 and Chi-square. Consequently, forest plots and Funnel plot have been evaluated with the use of a software program (i.e., Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Stata V16).
Results: A total of 167 potentially relevant titles and abstracts have been found during the electronic and manual search. Finally, ten studies have been included. Prevalence of Malignancy equalled 1.56%, effect size has been (ES 2.04 95% CI -61.03, 65.11. P= 0.95) among the six studies and the total number of patients has been 1595 (915 men, 680 female) with the age range of 20-68 years. No statistically significant difference has been found between studies (p=1.00).

Conclusion: It has been found that malignancy and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are the most pervasive underlying diseases in patients with COVID-19.