Step-down management of fever and neutropenia in low-risk pediatric and adolescent-young adult oncology patients is safe and effective: a single center experience

Febrile neutropenia (FN) is a common complication in pediatric oncology patients that typically necessitates hospitalization for intravenous antibiotics, resulting in significant use of hospital resources and decreased patient and family quality of life. Recently several centers have published early discharge guidelines for patients with low-risk FN, but this has not yet been reported at large tertiary centers with high acuity. Here we describe implementation of a low-risk early discharge FN guideline at our tertiary cancer center with resulting decrease in median length of stay (2.39 days saved per early discharge encounter) and no adverse events, including sepsis or infection-related mortality.