Managing a patient’s risk of febrile neutropenia

Febrile neutropenia (FN) is a serious adverse event caused by the toxic effects of chemotherapy. FN is expensive to treat and can impede a patient’s overall treatment plan. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of patients initiating chemotherapy every year are at risk for FN. In fact, there are 60,000 FN episodes per year in the US with a mortality rate of 8%—that equates to almost 5,000 FN deaths every year. Additionally, clinicians often lower chemotherapy doses for as many as 30% of patients, due to concerns about the risk of FN, which could lead to lower cancer cure rates for these patients. 

There are a myriad of variables that a physician must consider when deciding if prophylaxis with GCF is appropriate for the patient including age, sex, cancer type, height and weight, and pertinent laboratory results, as well as chemotherapy regimen, dose intensity, and supportive medication. FN PDx™ uses a validated mathematical model to do this complex calculation. As part of Proventys PDx Oncology™, FN PDx can help oncologists and their care teams not only predict the probability that a patient will develop FN during cycles one through four of their initial chemotherapy treatment, but also shows the risk levels and recommendations for treatment as outlined by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network^® (NCCN^®), American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) guidelines.

How FN PDx works

FN PDx uses a validated, multivariate statistical model to calculate a patient’s numerical risk of developing FN during the first four cycles of chemotherapy. The relevant cancer types for the FN PDx are breast, colon, lung, ovarian, Hodgkin lymphoma, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Results from each risk assessment are presented to the clinician along with published clinical guidelines to help determine if prophylactic treatment with colony stimulating factor is appropriate for each specific patient. Thousands of patients initiating chemotherapy annually are at risk for FN and hospitalization.

Coming soon

FN PDx is under review by the FDA (de novo) and is not currently available for sale in the U.S. Proventys is developing additional software-based predictive tests that could be used by clinicians as supportive care tools to assess a patient’s individualized risk of other chemotherapy-induced complications and help generate better outcomes.