The Prognostic Factor Evaluation of Febrile Neutropenia Before Chemotherapy to Hematologic Malignancies

Purpose Febrile neutropenia is one of the major toxicities-associated with chemotherapy especially in hematologic disorders. Thus, the occurrence of febrile neutropenia significantly can affect their treatment outcomes. But, it is difficult to predict their clinical courses and treatment outcomes. In this study, we analyzed the prechemothepeutic clinical characteristics of febrile neutropenia and their relationship with the prognosis of febrile neutropenia in the patients with hematologic malignancies.

Methods We retrospectively analyzed 259 cases of febrile neutropenia developed after the chemotherapy for their hematologic malignacies from January 2006 to July 2008 at the Korea University Medical Center to identify the potential prognosis predicting factors. For the early detection of the high risk of febrile neutropenia, we focused on the findings before chemotherapy.

Results With univariate analysis, age, underlying disease, recovery of neutropenia, onset time of febrile neutropenia, onset location, the duration of fever, infection sites, and type of cultured organism were significantly associated with mortality (p < 0.05). Also, the risk of mortality was significantly associated with laboratory findings (hemoglobin, platelet count, BUN, AST, albumin, sodium, bicarbonate, PT, ESR, CRP) of prechemotherapy. In multivariate analysis, only three variables of laboratory findings were associated with poor outcomes: albumin, bicarbonate and C-reactive protein of prechemotherapy. The recoveries of neutropenia and respiratory tract infection were also the significant risk factors in multivariate analysis. The complication rate in the patients who had three poor variables (low albumin & bicarbonate level and high CRP level) was 82.8%, while in the patient who had no poor variables was only 5.7%.

Conclusion The levels of albumin, bicarbonate and CRP, in prechemotherapic condition were associated with the prognosis of febrile neutropenia in our study. Therefore, the further prospective studies will be warranted to confirm the result of this study.