Regarding chemotherapy

[meghaagr36]

Hi,

My mother is 65 years old has been diagnosed with breast cancer and surgery has been done. She is ER , PR and HER-neu positive. Chemotherapy has been started and one session is over. She is diabetic and also has heart problems, her medication is already going on for those. After the chemotherapy she has caught fever which has not subsided since past 20 days inspite of giving antibiotics as a result her next session of chemotherapy has been postponed. I would like to know is this postponing safe enough and for how long can we postpone.

Also if a FISH test is required, coz in the reports only positive is mentioned and nothing like 2+ or 3+.

Thank you all,

Regards,

Megha

[roxboxfox RadiationOncologist]

It is important to know that no patient should ever die from chemotherapy and all necessary precautions should be taken to safeguard this priority. There should be Zero mortality.

One should cause no harm first, treat later.....

It is rather unfortunate that your mother had this episode of Neutropenic sepsis, which seems a bit more prolonged than expected.

It is advisable to wait as long as a patient is not fit enough to withstand the 2nd cycle of chemo. It may be lethal to hasten the chemo cycle, if patient has not recovered completely. A delay by a week or two should have no major detriment, though one should not deliberately delay chemo for non medical reasons.

Seek advice from your medical oncologist and he may or may not subject her to further investigation to find the cause of this fever, should this be clinically relevant.

Your oncologist will perhaps consider using growth factor support next time if already not done for the first time.

Best of luck

Dr Rohit Malde