Chemotherapy in Different Cancers; an Observational Study Highlighting the Association of Febrile Neutropenia with Various Hematological Parameters

Objective: This study was aimed to evaluate of febrile neutropenia in patients receiving chemotherapy and find out its association with haematological parameters. Methodology: This was an observational study conducted in the Oncology Department of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Karachi. The study was done for duration of 6 months from November 2017 till April 2018. Data was collected using non-probability convenient sampling technique after taking informed consent from 318 patients diagnosed as having cancer on histopathology, undergoing treatment with chemotherapeutic agent and having neutropenia along with fever as a single oral temperature of >38.3 oC. Patients who had comorbid conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, or psychiatric illness were excluded from this study. The variables recorded were age, gender, chemotherapy protocol, number of days of chemotherapy, haemoglobin, total leukocyte count, neutrophils, monocytes, platelets and creatinine. Patients were divided into 2 groups based on presence and absence of febrile neutropenia receiving the chemotherapeutic regimen, Group 1 consisted of those patients that have developed febrile neutropenia and Group 2 consisted of those patients that have not developed febrile neutropenia. SPSS version 20.0 was used for data analysis. T-test was used to assess the association. P-value of < 0.05 was taken as significant Results: The mean age of Group 1 patients was 39.88 ± 15.2 years while that of group 2 was 44.84 ± 12.2 years. In our study significant difference exists in some of the hematological parameters. In our study, group 1 had total leukocyte count of 1411.0180 ± 641.48 cells/cmm, neutrophil count of 17.64 ± 14.01/mm 3 and group 2 had total leukocyte count 3597.41 ± 1673.90 cells/cmm, neutrophil count 52.20 ± 12.08/mm 3 which is significantly different among two groups (p-value < 0.05). Conclusion: Our study showed that significant difference exists in some of the hematological parameters including hemoglobin levels, platelet count, total leukocyte count, neutrophil count, monocyte count and absolute neutrophil count in patient treat with different chemotherapeutic drugs suffering from febrile neutropenia. Keywords: Febrile Neutropenia; hematological association