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Delivery
Day care & infusion
Treatment delivered in a chair, close to home, under a written protocol.
Delivered at a partner unit
What it is
Day care is where most systemic treatment actually happens: you arrive, are assessed, receive the infusion, and go home the same day. Over a course, you will spend more hours here than anywhere else in your treatment.
The quality of a day-care unit is not its furniture. It is whether someone checks your bloods and your fitness before each cycle, whether the dose is confirmed against a protocol, whether toxicity from the last cycle is recorded, and whether there is a written procedure for the day something goes wrong.
When it is used
- Throughout a chemotherapy, immunotherapy or targeted infusion course
- For supportive infusions, fluids, blood products, bone-directed treatment, iron
How the decision is made
- Pre-cycle assessment: bloods, symptoms, weight, performance status.
- Treatment fitness and the go / no-go decision for the day.
- Dose confirmation, including any reduction from the previous cycle's toxicity.
- Toxicity review, documented so the next cycle is decided on evidence rather than memory.
At a partner day-care unit, chosen for proximity to your home wherever clinically reasonable. Where the unit is a POAS partner, it runs on our written protocols and is audited against them.
Who does what
What we handle, and what happens elsewhere
KPCIRC handles
- The regimen, dose and schedule
- Pre-cycle fitness and go / no-go documentation
- Toxicity review between cycles
- The escalation route if something happens during or after an infusion
- Protocol governance and audit for partner units
Performed and billed elsewhere
- The infusion itself
- Nursing administration
- The medicines
- Chair and facility charges
- Before every cycle, tell the day-care team about anything that happened since the last one, fever, mouth ulcers, diarrhoea, numbness, breathlessness. It changes the dose. Saying nothing to avoid a delay is how a manageable problem becomes a hospital admission.
Questions to ask your own doctor
Take these with you. They work whether or not you are treated here.
- Who checks my bloods before each cycle, and what would make you not give it?
- What is the protocol if I react during the infusion?
- Can I have this closer to home?
- What do I do about a fever at night?
Support that goes with it
Where this is used
Cancers this commonly forms part of
Breast cancer
Including hormone-receptor positive, HER2-positive and triple-negative disease
Lung & thoracic cancer
Non-small cell and small cell lung cancer, mesothelioma, thymic tumours
Colorectal cancer
Colon and rectal cancer, bowel cancer
Lymphoma
Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma
Stomach cancer
Gastric cancer
Ovarian cancer
Epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube and primary peritoneal cancer
Not sure this is the right option for you?
That is exactly what a second opinion is for. Bring what you have, we will tell you what is missing and what the alternatives actually are, in writing.