Early Postoperative Fever in Pediatric Oncology Patients Undergoing Solid Tumor Resection

Your patient's post-op day one from a hepatoblastoma resection, and they spike a fever. Do you think they need a big fever workup? Hi, my name's Sophia Skmore. I'm from Cincinnati Children, and I'm going to share a study with you today that says maybe they don't. A Study of 220 oncology patients found that 42% of them had a fever in the 48 hours following tumor resection. However, of these patients, only two of them, so 2.8%, had an actual infection, and those Patients were hemodynamically unstable with positive blood cultures, so it wasn't very subtle. Meanwhile, most fevers triggered a workup that costs on average about $500 a patient, and about a third of patients got empiric antibiotics that they didn't need. So here's the big takeaway. In the 48 hours following a tumor resection, a fever alone may not be a reason to panic. Save the big workup for your patients that are hemodynamically unstable or who have more overt signs of infection.