Evidence on safety and acceptability of home chemotherapy is growing

Paper p 826

The past century has seen hospitals become the focus of the healthcare system despite attempts to shift the emphasis of care to the community. Most attempts to move complex and invasive procedures out of hospital completely and into patients' homes remain marginal. One example of this is home chemotherapy, the subject of a randomised trial in this week's issue (p 826).1

Home chemotherapy is a service that provides a package of care to support the administration of chemotherapy to patients in their homes by specialist healthcare professionals (usually nurses). It may be distinguished from ambulatory chemotherapy, where patients visit the outpatient department to be connected to portable disposable pumps prefilled with cytotoxic drugs, which are then administered via a central venous catheter for 48 to 168 hours, and from day hospital chemotherapy, where patients visit the hospital daily to have their chemotherapy administered. …