{"doi":"10.1002/emp2.12576","title":"Emergency department disposition of non‐neutropenic febrile patients with cancer","abstract":"OBJECTIVES: National data reveal that 60% of the 4.5 million annual emergency department (ED) visits by patients with cancer result in admission. Many of these visits are due to a febrile illness. Current literature provides limited guidance on how to treat non-neutropenic febrile ED patients. This study characterizes clinical outcomes of non-neutropenic febrile patients with cancer presenting to an academic, Comprehensive Cancer Center affiliated ED. METHODS: Retrospective chart review of 101 randomly selected adult patients with active cancer presenting with a chief complaint of fever or a documented fever in the ED and an absolute neutrophil count above 1000 between October 2015 and September 2016. Descriptive statistics were calculated. RESULTS: The primary malignancies represented were hematologic (24%), gastrointestinal (13%), head and neck (13%), and genitourinary (8%). Sixty-two percent were on chemotherapy, 15% on radiation therapy, and 12% were on targeted therapy. Severe illness outcomes occurred in 39% and 83% were admitted with a median length of stay of 4 days. Among admitted patients, 24% experienced a length of stay ≤2 days. A return visit to the ED or an in-system hospitalization within 7 days of the index visit occurred in 10% and death occurred within 7 days of the index visit in 4%. CONCLUSION: A majority of patients presenting to the ED with non-neutropenic fever are admitted (83%), of whom nearly a quarter experience a length of stay of ≤2 days with infrequent serious illness outcomes. Future efforts should focus on the development of risk stratification tools in this population to avoid potentially unnecessary hospitalizations.","journal":"Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians Open","year":2021,"id":195131,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":9,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9502,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":766365,"name":"Patrick J. Sylvester","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":745338,"name":"Jennifer A. Frey","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":446043,"name":"Julie Stephens","orcid":"0000-0002-6622-6761","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":766366,"name":"Becca Hammond","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":766367,"name":"Joshua Garmatter","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":411089,"name":"Courtney Hebert","orcid":"0000-0003-1646-702X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":539592,"name":"Jeffrey M. Caterino","orcid":"0009-0004-2512-4955","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":765846,"name":"Jason J. Bischof","orcid":"0000-0001-5950-130X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":14,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:50:03.719152Z","pmid":"34632455","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}