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Emergency department presentations in early stage breast cancer patients receiving adjuvant and neoadjuvant chemotherapy
Author(s) -
Tang Monica,
Horsley Patrick,
Lewis Craig R.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
internal medicine journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.596
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1445-5994
pISSN - 1444-0903
DOI - 10.1111/imj.13785
Subject(s) - medicine , docetaxel , chemotherapy , breast cancer , emergency department , regimen , breast cancer chemotherapy , oncology , chemotherapy regimen , stage (stratigraphy) , cancer , surgery , paleontology , psychiatry , biology
(Neo)adjuvant chemotherapy for early stage breast cancer is associated with side‐effects, resulting in increased emergency department (ED) presentations. Treatment‐related toxicity can affect quality of life, compromise chemotherapy delivery and treatment outcomes, and increase healthcare use. We performed a retrospective study of ED presentations in patients receiving curative chemotherapy for early breast cancer to identify factors contributing to ED presentations. Of 102 patients, 39 (38%) presented to ED within 30 days of chemotherapy, resulting in 63 ED presentations in total. Most common reasons were non‐neutropenic fever (17 presentations/27%), neutropenic fever (15/24%), pain (9/14%), drug reaction (6/10%) and infection (4/6%). Factors significantly associated with ED presentation were adjuvant chemotherapy timing compared to neoadjuvant timing ( P = 0.031), prophylactic antibiotics ( P = 0.045) and docetaxel‐containing regimen ( P = 0.018).