Risk factors associated to infectious complications in children with febrile neutropenia induced by chemotherapy: A cohort study.

Abstract

e22535 Background: Children cancer is the second cause of mortality, most of deaths are related to infectious complications due to immunosuppression provoked by chemotherapy. Febrile neutropenia is one of the most common issues in oncological patients and it’s considered an emergency. Studies have tried risk predicting models implementation, although they still need to be validated, updated and reproducible in different scenarios. The aim of this study was the early identification of conditioning factors to severe infectious complications in patients with febrile neutropenia that would allow taking decisions for diagnosis and treatment. Methods: We present a prospective cohort study that estimated the risk associated to clinical and paraclinical factors and the development of infectious complications in pediatric patients with febrile neutropenia induced by chemotherapy on their admission of an emergency room (ER). The clinical features analyzed were: age, type of cancer, chemotherapy regime, time between chemotherapy administration and ER admission, use of colony-stimulating factors, presence of central venous catheter, highest temperature registered, tachycardia, polypnea, hypoxemia and hypotension. The paraclinical features included were leucocyte, neutrophil and monocyte count, and C-reactive protein levels. Results: From 186 febrile neutropenia events, 101 cases reported infectious complications (54%). Clinical infection was the most frequent issue (38%). On the multivariate analysis we found that the features independently associated to infectious complication were tachycardia (OR1.07, CI95% 1.70-6.99) and highest temperature level reported in the ER (OR1.07, CI95% 1.00-1.13). Conclusions: Febrile neutropenia is the most common complication in pediatric oncological patients and it is related to life-threatening infections and high mortality rate. Risk prediction during the initial assessment in the ER is important to stratify patients and offer target therapy to decrease complications and prolonged hospitalization.