Nurses play a vital role in preventing, recognizing, and treating pediatric oncology emergencies, which can happen at diagnosis, as a complication of therapy, or at disease progression or recurrence.
In constantly assessing their patients, pediatric oncology nurses are in a key position to recognize complications early, and providers depend on them to do so. The earlier a potential emergency is identified, the lower the risk for the child.
There are four common types of emergencies: superior vena cava syndrome, spinal cord compression, tumour lysis syndrome, and septic shock (the box on the next page shows additional types of pediatric emergencies).