A trial of chemotherapy for lung cancer in short-term hospitalization

Recently the number of patients with lung cancer who receive chemotherapy has been increasing rapidly. Therefore it has become difficult to treat all patients with advanced lung cancer on the basis of accurate protocol in long-term hospitalization. Accordingly we tried to treat patients within one week in each of a number of chemotherapy protocols (short-term hospitalization) and to follow them in the outpatient department. We were able to accept 61 admissions of 38 patients for chemotherapy from June to December 1985. Thus it was possible to take care of more than three times as many patients as could be cared for by long-term hospitalization for chemotherapy. Three patients could not be discharged within one week and eight had to be readmitted because of leucopenia, thrombocytopenia, or dehydration. It was considered to be possible to decrease the number of such patients by more careful and appropriate hydration and to detect them by appropriate intervals of examination in the outpatient department. We concluded that short-term hospitalization is one of the methods which can make chemotherapy of lung cancer more effective.