Objective: Compare the mortality between critically ill patients who received urgent chemotherapy for a cancer-related life-threatening complication with matched patients (controls) who did not received it.
Design: Propensity score-matched retrospective study.
Setting: Adult intensive care unit in an oncological hospital.
Participants: All adults with solid tumor or hematological malignancies who received at least 1 day of urgent intravenous chemotherapy for a cancer-related life-threatening complication. Using the propensity score method adjusted for 10 variables, patients who received urgent chemotherapy were matched to patients who did not.
Interventions: None.
Main outcomes measures: Intensive care unit and hospital mortality.
Results: Forty-seven patients (57% with solid tumors and 43% with hematological malignancies) who received urgent chemotherapy were matched to 94 controls. At intensive care unit admission, patients were similar except that those who received urgent chemotherapy were less likely to have received chemotherapy previously (36% vs 85%; P < .01). The intensive care unit (48.9% vs 23.4%; P < .01) and hospital (76.6% vs 46.8%; P < .01) mortality of the patients who received urgent chemotherapy was higher than the controls. The subgroup analysis showed that the higher mortality was limited to patients with solid tumor.
Conclusion: The use of urgent chemotherapy is associated with an increase in the intensive care unit and hospital mortality of unselected critically ill patients with solid tumors but not in patients with hematological malignancies.
Keywords: chemotherapy; critical illness; intensive care units; mortality; neoplasms; survival analysis.