Víctor J Costela Ruiz, Lucia Melguizo-Rodriguez, Rebeca Illescas-Montes, Elvira De Luna-Bertos, Javier Ramos-Torrecillas and Concepcion Ruiz
University of Granada, Spain
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Gen Med (Los Angeles)
Polycythemia vera (PV) is a myeliproliferative disease characterized by an increase of erythrocitos that leads to an increase of red bool cell mass. There are several treatments to face the disease, among others, treatment with hydrox urea. The objective is to determinate the nurse role in the following up of patients treated with hydroxy urea in order to be able to early detect adverse events and resistance. Be means of literature collection from different clinical database (PubMed, MEDLINE, Bio Med Central, Science, Cinahl) and with keywords: nursing, polycytemia, hydroxy urea intolerance, hydroxy urea resistance, hydroxy urea adverse events; we have collected 28 papers related to this field. Nowadays, hydroxy urea is the first choice in patients with high risk disease, although 24% of patients can develop hydroxiurea adverse events or resistence. The most common adverse events related to the treatment with hydroxyurea are cardiovascular events, oral and skin ulcerations, vaso - oclusive pain, acute chest syndrome, avascular necrosis, retinopathy, and poor quality of life. In case of hydroxyurea resistance, treatment is not effective for patients with PV, and are in risk of thrombosis, hematologic diseases like myelifibrosis and/or acute myeloid leukaemia/mielodisplastic syndrome. In case of intolerance and/or resistance or acute adverse events, ruxolitinib (tyrosine kinase inhibitor) is usually the alternative. Nursing role in this clinic field is very important detecting in an early way possible complications or resistances related to this treatment in order to get first hand information to doctor in charge of patient´s treatment.
Víctor J Costela Ruíz has completed his Bachelor’s at the University of Granada and he is now enrolled in a Predoctoral contract in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Granada. He has several Bachelor´s degrees (Social Work, Anthropology, Criminology and Nursing) and Master´s degrees in Anthropology and in Nursing Emergencies. He also works directly with the Hematologist Unit of the General Hospital of Granada.
E-mail: vircoss@hotmail.com
