Managing issues: Tumor lysis, extravasation, adverse effects, and others

Abstract

Modern medicine has contributed to enhance human longevity and quality of life. On the other hand, an elderly population inhabiting a continuously polluted environment certainly contributes to the raise of cancer development. In this context, anticancer drugs are in high demand in recent decades, and oncology pharmacology is one of the medical fields experiencing a remarkable research activity and development of new drugs. However, anticancer drugs are among the more toxic drugs legally available, and more than 750 different types of adverse reaction scan be attributed to cancer treatments. Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are among the leading concerns when drug research and development are considered once they are potentially related to therapeutic failures, and consequently, drugs withdraw from the market. ADRs have been estimated to contribute up to 60% of the total costs involved in chemotherapy. The physicochemical drug features are highly related to the onset of ADRs. These drug features are directly involved in key aspects of drug metabolism, like absorption, distribution, efficacy, transformation, excretion, and drug promiscuity. Hepatotoxicity, kidney toxicity, cardiovascular toxicity, neurotoxicity, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, alopecia, rheumatic manifestations, neutropenia, and thrombocytopenia are among the most common ADRs described in literature, and they are described in the context of the different anticancer drugs families.