Clinical analysis of febrile neutropenia in urological anticancer chemotherapy: retrospective single center study.

Objectives: The aims of this study were to clarify the frequency and prognosis of febrile neutropenia (FN) in patients who received urological anticancer chemotherapy.

Methods: Between May 2005 and January 2010, 141 patients underwent urological anticancer chemotherapy at the Sapporo Medical University Hospital, Sapporo, Japan. They consisted of 124 men and 17 women aged 62 (range 16-80) years. The patients underwent a total of 626 treatment courses of urological anticancer chemotherapy.

Results: Of the 626 urological anticancer chemotherapy courses, grades 3 and 4 neutropenia occurred in 451 (72.0 %) courses. FN developed in 57 (9.1 %) courses in which 7 (12.3 %) and 50 (87.7 %) patients were classified as high risk and low risk, respectively, according to the Multinational Association for Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC) risk index scoring system. There was no anticancer chemotherapy-related death in either the high- or low-risk group. The frequencies of bacteria isolated from courses with FN were 0 and 10.0 % for the high- and low-risk groups, respectively.

Conclusions: According to the MASCC scoring system, there were fewer patients in the high-risk group than in the low-risk group in this study. There were no cases of anticancer chemotherapy-related death in either group. Therefore, urological anticancer chemotherapy can be conducted safely with the proper management of neutropenia and FN.