Immediate adverse reactions in the chemotherapy treatment of patients with cancer at an oncology day hospital

Abstract

A descriptive and cross-sectional study was performed to characterize the degree of immediate adverse reaction and the type of causative antineoplastic drug presented by 371 different patients treated for cancer at the oncology day hospital unit of the San Carlos Clinical Hospital (Madrid, Spain), during the period between January 2015 and December 2019. In the case series, 488 immediate adverse reactions secondary to chemotherapy toxicity were detected. The dominating factors were: Female sex, age from 51-70 years old, skin melanoma and the use of vinca alkaloids and analogs. Among the most frequent adverse reactions, the following stood out: Disorders of the nervous and musculoskeletal systems and of the connective tissue. There was a higher number of moderate adverse reactions (grade 2 according to the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events Version 4.0) between the first and third chemotherapy cycles, with a latency period of between 6 and 15 min., generally lasting less than 30 min. Association with the degree of immediate adverse reaction (grade) has been observed in male subjects over 71 years of age, with soft tissue neoplasm type and monoclonal antibodies therapeutic group.