The team of pharmacists at the Hospital da Luz Lisboa, with the support of the Oncology Center, created a card for cancer patients undergoing immunotherapy. It serves as an alert for side effects and as support for other physicians. And it helps to save lives. This card, which is slightly larger than an ATM card, is delivered to the patient at the beginning of his treatment. The Cancer Patient’s Fast Track card is delivered to the patient by the oncologist and the pharmacist during the consultation in which he is informed that he will undergo immunotherapy. And it is filled with the safety information about the medicine, the identification of the oncologist and the respective telephone contact to be used in case of emergency. The card mentions the most frequent adverse effects of immunotherapies in cancer disease, which require vigilance. For that reason, the patient should keep his card with him and present it whenever he visits a doctor of another specialty or even if he needs to go to another hospital. Patients shouldn’t devalue or attempt to treat undesirable effects on their own. If they develop any of the symptoms described in the card, they should contact their doctor or go to a health unit. If he feels unwell, the patient should check the information on the card and go to a health unit, taking it with him. That will facilitate the contact with his doctor and help the clinician in the emergency service to make the appropriate assessment and prescribe the correct treatment. Wherever the patient goes, even an institution that doesn’t know him and doesn’t know how to deal with the situation, the card identifies him, indicates the therapeutics, his doctor and the emergency contact. And it also indicates that that therapeutics causes a series of adverse reactions, identifying them and pointing out the specific pharmacological measures to treat them. Thus, the Cancer Patient’s Fast Track card works both as a warning card for the patient, as it identifies the signs to be aware of, and as support to the emergency doctor, who, confronted with those adverse reactions, is uncertain how to intervene. «It’s important that throughout all the chain of health care of these patients be known the correct way of dealing with possible reactions to these drugs, which are easily confused with the symptoms of other diseases», explains the director of the pharmacy supply services of Hospital da Luz Lisboa, Cláudia Santos. «The side effects of these immune-oncological treatments are related to increased immune system activity, they don’t manifest themselves in the same way in all people and can appear even months after the end of the treatment», explains Nazaré Rosado, the pharmacist responsible for this initiative, while José Luis Passos Coelho, director of the Oncology Center, adds: «In the suspicion of adverse reactions caused by treatment with immunotherapy, it’s very important the appropriate evaluation of the patient to exclude other causes. In the case of immune-mediated toxicity, specific support and treatment measures should be initiated as soon as possible, sometimes with administration of corticoids». The Cancer Patient’s Fast Track card helps save lives. Talk about it with your oncologist at the Hospital da Luz. And bring it with you at all times.
