Swiss 2024 Continous Fever Monitoring in Pediatric Oncology Patients

Summary

In children and adolescents undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, fever in neutropenia (FN) is the most frequent potentially lethal complication of chemotherapy for cancer. Emergency hospitalization and empirical treatment with i.v. broad-spectrum antibiotics have reduced lethality from \>50% in certain high risk situations to \<1%. Fever without neutropenia is a further complication requiring emergency evaluation and often emergency treatment. Continuous monitoring of fever leads to earlier fever detection compared to the usual discrete fever measurements performed only for clinical reasons. Earlier detection of fever leads to earlier assessment and treatment and thus can reduce the risk of complications. This study primarily aims to assess, in pediatric patients undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, the efficacy of automated fever alerts resulting from continuous fever monitoring (CFM) using a wearable device (WD), measured by the duration of intravenous antibiotics (i.v. AB) given for any cause.