Albumin level has been shown to be more important predictive marker of chemotherapy toxicity and survival than cachexia and sarcopenia are. This approach in clinical settings can be used to guide the choice of oncologic treatment.

Severe COVID19 patients require mechanical ventilation (MV) in up to 15.2% of cases [1]. Postintubation (PITS), post-tracheostomy (PTTS) tracheal stenosis and tracheoesophageal (TE) fistulas are tracheal complications of MV. The incidence of tracheal complications of MV was 1 in 200 000 patients annually before the COVID19 pandemic [2]. The most important risk factors for these complications include prolonged MV, reintubation and excessive tracheal tube cuff pressure (>30 cm H2O), all of which were common in mechanically ventilated COVID19 patients [3, 4]. We experienced a significant increase in referrals to our interventional pulmonology (IP) unit at a tertiary teaching hospital for PITS and PTTS treatment after the most severe COVID19 surges and thus conducted this retrospective study with prospective follow up aiming to describe this unique cohort of patients.

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reached) and median progression-free survival (PFS) was 17.8 months (95 CI: 13.1-24.2). Median OS was 37.2 months and not reached whereas median PFS was 14.2 months and 22 months in patients treated with upfront chemotherapy (n¼24) and with upfront ALK-inhibitor (n¼32), respectively. 2 nd line PFS was 22.6 months among patients (n¼13) treated with 2 nd line treatment. On multivariate analysis, gender (p¼0.007) and upfront treatment regimen (p¼0.001) emerged as independent prognostic factors for PFS whereas performance status (p¼0.02) and upfront treatment regimen (p¼0.01) showed significance for OS. Table 1: Baseline clinical characteristics and treatment details (n¼78) Conclusion: Primary tumor size was small with higher nodal burden and brain metastases in our cohort. Outcome was excellent with use of ALK-inhibitors in our series. Female sex and upfront use of ALK-inhibitors showed superior PFS whereas as good performance status and upfront use of ALK-inhibitors showed superior OS.