Supportive care

Supportive care issues play a very prominent role in the management of malignant disease. In this context, “supportive care” includes the prevention and treatment of both the complications of anti-neoplastic therapy and of the cancer itself. It is recognized that many of the increasingly effective intensive management strategies now used in oncologic practice could not be employed in the absence of a thorough understanding of these processes, and the development of helpful therapeutic approaches. In this chapter a number of supportive care topics, recently highlighted in the published peer-reviewed literature, are discussed. These include: (a) factors which predict for the development of various types of infectious events (bacterial, viral, fungal) in specific malignancies; (b) the clinical utility of oral versus intravenous antibiotics; (c) the benefits of prophylactic antibiotic therapy (d) outpatient management of neutropenic fever; (e) strategies to optimally manage bacterial, viral and fungal infections in cancer patients; (f) complications associated with the use of indwelling intravenous catheter systems in the oncology patient population and methods to both manage and prevent such events; (g) new developments in anti-emetic therapy; and (h) and a novel strategy to prevent treatment-associated mucositis.