How do I know if my chemo dose is correct?

Dear DeeDee60

Thank you for contacting our online community for support. My name is Joanne, and I’m one of the Cancer Information Nurse Specialists. I can see that you have joined our breast cancer forum and chemotherapy forum, and I hope you are finding them helpful.

It can be worrying when things change during your treatment such as weight loss and you are correct that this can have a knock-on effect on your treatment such as the dose. In general chemotherapy doses are calculated using your height and weight to work out the total body surface area, however, this isn’t the only factor. This gives a basic dose which may be changed depending on blood results such as kidney and liver function and how well your bone marrow has recovered. Also, some for some chemotherapy calculations clinicians are moving away from using body surface area to calculate drug dosage but are using standard doses as there is growing evidence that this is safe to do and does not compromise outcomes. For these reasons, we would not recommend you try to calculate the dose yourself.

In practice most hospitals use a system called ChemoCare which is an electronic prescribing system for chemotherapy. When any treatment is changed, in this case from EC to Paclitaxel all your information will need to be recorded again so your new weight should be in place. Any prescription generated from this system will have your height, weight and blood results printed alongside your prescription. For peace of mind, you could ask your consultant when you are next in clinic to show you the information and talk you through the calculations relevant to you. Alternatively, you can ask the chemotherapy nurses if you can see your prescription next time you go.

I hope this information helps. Please feel free to get back in touch if you want further information or support.

Best wishes

Joanne F,

Cancer Information Nurse Specialist.

You can also speak with the Macmillan Support Line team of experts by phoning 0808 808 0000, calls are free, and lines are open 8am-8pm, 7 days a week, or you can send us an email or use webchat.

Ref JF/RH