If a chemo patient shows signs of a UTI before treatment, should an infection be ruled out before chemo is given?

Question

My dad was complaining of frequent (every hour all day and night) urination last weekend. I called his oncologist Monday morning and informed them he may have a UTI. He was scheduled to be there in an hour and she would look into it. He gave a urine specimen while he was there and no one said anything or called.

I looked at his results online Thursday night and it showed bacteria in his urine, which I informed him of Friday morning. He goes to see his oncologist later that morning and the doctor had no idea he had any type of infection. My dad told him I called and said he did... So which the doctor goes and checks, comes back and said yeah you do. Gave him a script for Cipro.

Now, since it went so long untreated my dad was taken to hospital via ambulance because he is now septic, secondary to a lower UTI. The ER doctor said that the chemo made it worse because it made it impossible for him to fight the infection.

Should have he received chemotherapy when there were signs of an infection?

Tarkarri · Answer

When I was undergoing chemotherapy I was alerted to check my temp morning and night and report to the ER immediately if it went over a certain level.
It did spike doe to infection and my daughter (who was 15) made immediate arrangements for me to get to the ER, I was given antibiotics and the infection was under control within 8 hours.
This occurred mid way through my chemotherapy cycle and although it was reported to my oncologist, they were NOT involved in the treatment and it did NOT interfere in any way with my chemotherapy routine.
Blood tests were run the morning of each chemo session to check blood levels were normal and temperature was checked minutes before chemo was administered to check there was no fever.
Given he had 2 oncologist visits within a week, where was he in his chemotherapy cycle?  The oncologist is NOT normally involved in day to day health care.

Tink · Answer

Entirely depends on the medications he is given. Even with immuno suppressants, it would be very unlikely for someone to become septic in the matter of a few days unless they had an especially virulent strain of infection. Cipro is a second generation antibiotic, but perhaps not enough for some strains of infection.

Take care

april · Answer

A uti starts as a pretty simple infection, easy to treat. It's not the oncologist's job to deal with things not related to cancer and treatments. He's getting regular blood tests to check for neutropenia. If he's still on schedule with chemo, there's not a problem getting antibiotics.

Troy · Answer

From my experience yes the chemo should have been delayed until the infection was under control, as long as it would not be life threatening to delay the chemo, That would be up to his Oncologist to make that decision.

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If a chemo patient shows signs of a UTI before treatment, should an infection be ruled out before chemo is given?

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