Acute Toxicity of Chemotherapeutic Agents Used For Treatment of Patients with Malignancy in kerbala Province/Iraq

Abstract

Background: the number of cancer cases increasing not only in adult patients but also during childhood overall the world. Treatment with chemotherapy differs according to the case and type of cancer. Some of these systems produce toxic effects especially for the children which may be dangerous or even fatal. So that, studying these toxicities and adverse effects may help in improving patient outcomes and survive their life.Objective: to investigate the most common acute adverse effects of cancer patients undergoing cytotoxic chemotherapy.Methodology: sixty one (61) patients diagnosed with different types of cancer were enrolled in this study (39 males and 22 females) in the Oncology center, Pediatric Department/ Imam Hussein hospital of Kerbala/Iraq. The age of them was from 7 months to 17 years. Types of cancers were classified according to the histopathological features and clinical diagnosis and classified according to the affected organ. Venous blood was taken from each patient at morning before taken the drug for further investigations such as complete blood count and biochemical assay. Results: mean ± stander error for weight of male (20±1.71) and for female (18.86±1.80), and the age of patients was (7months-17years). The cases where distributed as 56.45% of cases were in urban area and 41.53 % in rural area. 76.57% of patients were poor, while 26.31 % were middle and 15.78% were classified as rich patients. Significant differences were observed in types of cancers between male and female patients (p≤0.05). In addition, the effect of chemotherapy was clear on the number of White Blood Cells (WBC) since etoposide and cytosar have no effect on WBC number other than drugs. While drugs have non-significant effect on hemoglobin concentration. Effect of vincristine and Leucovorine drugs led to a significant decrease in the number of blood platelets. Effect on renal function markers also were examined and the urea and creatinine were affected largely by the interactions between the drugs.Conclusion: patients who are diagnosed with cancer may lose their life not only by cancer disease, but may because of the treatment by chemotherapy drugs systems since some interactions between these drugs may be fatal in addition to their toxicities. There for, choosing correct drugs with correct doses have a large role to save their life.