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During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, contact with the health care system for cancer treatment can increase risk of infection and associated mortality. Treatment recommendations must consider this risk for elderly and vulnerable cancer patients. We reanalyzed trials in elderly glioblastoma (GBM) patients, incorporating COVID-19 risk, in order to provide a quantitative framework for comparing different radiation (RT) fractionation schedules on patient outcomes.

We extracted individual patient-level data for 1321 patients from Kaplan–Meier curves from 5 randomized trials on treatment of elderly GBM patients including available subanalyses based on O⁶-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) methylation status. We simulated trial data with incorporation of COVID-19–associated mortality risk in several scenarios (low, medium, and high infection …