Chemotherapy and its risks for those who administer it

A moment during chemotherapy two weeks ago: the nurse who was about to hook up the plastic bag containing my gemcitabine dose paused to first put on a medical gown. Teresa tells me she’s seen a couple of other nurses do this, but it doesn't seem to be common. Why did this nurse put on the gown? The answer, as she explained, is that it’s a precaution against contact with the gemcitabine. She herself had spilled gemcitabine on her arm at some point, and despite washing her arm quickly, she wound up with a burn on her skin – and that was from just a brief exposure to the drug.

She went on to explain to us that Memorial Sloan Kettering is engaged in a study of the effects of staff members' long-term exposure to chemotherapy drugs. That kind of exposure can be the result of spillage, but also can come from the vaporizing of tiny quantities of the drug during the process of intravenous infusion. In an earlier post I mentioned the new valve we saw not too long ago, used on the IV line in an effort to prevent this vaporizing. Between the valve and the gowns it seems that quite a bit of care is now being taken to protect the nurses, but it’s striking that these steps seem to be quite recent. Was this risk overlooked in the past? Or, on the other hand, is it being overstated now? In our experience, most nurses don’t seem to use the gowns; whether that reflects the power of habit, or the nurses’ lack of time, or instead attests to their sense that the gowns are an unnecessary precaution I don’t know.

The fact is that no one can know very much about this long-term risk, because chemotherapy itself hasn’t been around that long. In effect, the nurses are part of a life experiment to find out what the risks are.