People with blood cancers like leukaemia can easily get sick because their immune systems are not very strong. To treat these diseases, they might get special medicine called chemotherapy. Sometimes, doctors use chemotherapy to try and cure the disease, while in other cases, they use it to make the person feel better and live longer.
Chemotherapy can make it even harder for the body to fight infections. So, it’s common for people to get sick, especially in the few weeks after getting chemotherapy. Infections can be serious when a person’s white blood cell count is low, and sometimes you can find bacteria in their bloodstream. However, not everyone gets sick the same way.
Finding infections early is very important because they can be life-threatening for people with weak immune systems. Sometimes, those who are at high risk have to stay in the hospital, or they go to an assessment unit where doctors keep a close eye on them.
We want to learn more about people who get chemotherapy for a type of blood cancer called acute myeloid leukaemia and closely related cancers. We want to see if the kind of treatment they get and how intense it is can predict if they’ll get infections in their bloodstream. This can help us figure out who might be able to safely have some of their care at home and who might need extra medicine to prevent infections.