Variability of temperature during chemotherapy treatment
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Natural variability of body temperature in patients receiving chemotherapy
IRAS ID
184703
Contact name
Helen Ashdown
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
R&D Department, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 10 months, 30 days
Research summary
Patients who are receiving chemotherapy can be at risk of an important condition called “febrile neutropenia” which is due to low levels of white blood cells. It can be serious and needs urgent assessment and treatment. One of the signs of this may be developing a fever (high body temperature) and so patients may be advised to monitor their temperature during chemotherapy treatment.
We would like to understand more about how chemotherapy treatment affects how body temperature changes over the course of a chemotherapy cycle, and how it changes when someone develops febrile neutropenia. This will help us to develop advice about how best to measure temperature during chemotherapy for future patients.
We will invite patients who are starting a chemotherapy treatment cycle at the Day Treatment Unit at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford, to take part in our study, which is an unfunded study. We will ask patients to record their temperature in a diary whenever they measure it during the chemotherapy cycle, along with the date and time. This will not involve making any extra measurements for the study, just writing down the ones taken anyway. We will also ask patients to record simple details about any unplanned visits to hospital and the reason, and record information from hospital records with details of the hospital admission.
We will analyse this data to find out what normal body temperature variation is during chemotherapy, and will also look at temperature variations in the days leading up to any hospital admissions for neutropenic sepsis.
REC name
North East - York Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/NE/0267
Date of REC Opinion
24 Jul 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion