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Nausea and vomiting are well-documented complications of cancer chemotherapy and negatively affect the quality of life. We studied patterns of antiemetic therapy and assessed its outcomes in patients undergoing high-dose antineoplastic therapy. This study evaluated retrospectively forty-one patients who were discharged after bone-marrow transplantation from January to June in 1998. We divided into the acute phase (from day 1 of chemotherapy to 24 hours after its completion) and the delayed phase (from 24 hours to five days after end of chemotherapy), and severity of nausea and vomiting were graded by common toxicity criteria grading scale. Of 41 patients, 12 patients had no nausea and 15 patients didn´t vomit on the first day in the acute phase. Though the cases of Grade "0" nausea and vomiting were increased from day 2 to day 4, nausea was significantly increased and vomiting was slightly increased after day 5. The most frequent administered antiemetic agent´s regimen was co-medication of ondansetron, dexamethasone, lorazepam, and metoclopramide. And the co-medication of ondansetron, lorazepam, and metoclopramide was increased to average 15 cases after day 6. Vomiting was rarely occurred during the delayed phase, but one had Grade 4 vomiting on day 1, 2 of the delayed phase. Yet, nausea was continuously observed. Serotonin type Ⅲ antagonist such as ondansetron and the other additive antiemetic therapy after the administration of high-dose antineoplastic agent affirmatively affected the condition of patients. The continuous use of ondansetron on the delayed phase that is argued about efficiency and the administration of dexamethasone that can cause GVHD need more considered drug choice of physician. Therefore, the pharmacist ought to effort to perform systemically the role as evaluator of the administered medicine for the reasonable drug use in hospital.
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