Does Fever Response to Acetaminophen Predict Blood Stream Infections in
Febrile Neutropenia?
Abstract
Background: There is a need to identify clinical parameters for
early and effective risk stratification and prediction of bacterial
blood stream infections (BSI) in patients with febrile neutropenia (FN).
1,2,3,4 Acetaminophen is used widely to treat fever in
FN; however, little research exists on whether fever response to
acetaminophen can be used as a predictor of BSIs. Objectives:
Investigate the relationship between fever response to acetaminophen and
bacteremia in FN. Design/Method: A retrospective review of
patients (1-21 years old) presenting with FN and bacteremia at Rady
Children’s Hospital (2012-2018) was performed. Demographic information,
presenting signs/symptoms, degree of neutropenia (ANC > 500
or < 500 cells/µL), absolute monocyte count (AMC), blood
culture results, temperatures 1-, 2-, and 6-hours after acetaminophen,
and timing of antibiotic administration were examined. Patients were
stratified into three malignancy categories: leukemia/lymphoma, solid
tumor, and hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT). Patients were
matched with culture negative controls based on sex, age, malignancy
category, and degree of neutropenia. Results: Thirty-five
cohort-control pairs met inclusion criteria (70 presentations of FN).
Mean age of cohort was 10.7 years (± 6.3) vs. 10.0 years (± 5.9) for the
controls. Twenty were female (57%). Twenty-three pairs were categorized
as leukemia/lymphoma (66%), 8 as solid tumor (23%) and 4 as HSCT
(11%). Thirty-four pairs (97%) had a presenting ANC < 500
cells/µL. Higher temperature 1-hour post-acetaminophen was associated
with bacteremia (p = 0.04). Logistic regression demonstrated that
temperature 1-hour post-acetaminophen had significant predictive value
for bacteremia (p = 0.011). Area under the receiver operating
characteristic curves (AUC-ROC) for logistic regression and
classification and regression tree (CART) analysis were 0.70 and 0.71
respectively. Conclusion: While temperature 1-hour
post-acetaminophen was higher among patients with bacteremia and was a
significant predictor of bacteremia, fever response in isolation lacks
sufficient predictive value to impact clinical decision making. Future
studies are needed to assess fever responsiveness as an adjunct to
existing modalities of FN risk stratification.