European surveillance of infections in cancer patients - ESIC

Major advances in cancer therapy result from development of multidrug chemo therapy regimens. Besides death from tumor progression, infections are curr ently one of the major causes of mortality and morbidity. Because of the ri sk of complications and mortality, the treatment for febrile neutropenia is admission to hospital and administration of broad-spectrum antibiotics. Re sponse rates of initial antimicrobial treatment vary considerably (40-92%). Due to the heterogeneity of populations in randomized studies, comparison of efficacy and identification of risk factors is limited. This is the main reason why the European Society of Biomodulation and Chemotherapy (ESBiC) is conducting a surveillance study that concentrates more on the evaluation of risk factors than on the therapeutic outcome of prospective randomized antimicrobial regimens: European Surveillance of Infections in Cancer Patie nts (ESIC). The present contribution is to determine which cancer patients are at low risk for fever, and can benefit from first-line treatment with t reatment options such as monotherapy as well as on an outpatient basis.