Chapters Index (French) French Version Welcome page Contact

Non-cancer-related emergencies

A general tendency among physicians who treat few or no cancer patients is to assimilate, as does the general public, cancer and quick death.

Thus, complicated therapeutic procedures for another disease, possibly offering very important patient benefit, are not always offered under the false pretext that the patient is soon going to die from cancer.

However, many patients are cured from their cancer, and if not may benefit from a long remission enjoying good quality of life. Thus, for emergencies, a short multidisciplinary discussion should be set up in order to institute an appropriate therapeutic project for the other disease the cancer patient is suffering from.

On the other hand, the human mind naturally attempts to unite all of the symptoms into one unique disease: but cancer patients may suffer life threatening emergencies from a totally different origin.

Thus, even in a cancer centre, the clinical diagnosis of an emergency situation should include all pathologies and consequently involves good knowledge of internal and emergency medicine.

Sometimes, patients are addressed to the cancer centre by their general practitioner or by local emergency services because patients have been treated there. In fact, it would be wiser to send the patients to a cardiological intensive care unit (or specialised respiratory, metabolic, infectious units, or to a competent surgeon).

A delay may therefore be observed during which patients wait in the emergency room of cancer centre before being sent to the most appropriate hospital for their situation. If not always harmful, this delay is always an unnecessary supplementary discomfort due to further emergency transport.