Treatment Patterns and Outcomes with Solid Cancer Patients Suffering from Thrombocytopenia

Thrombocytopenia an abnormal term used to denote abnormal decreases or drop in platelets numbers. Thrombocytopenia is a common problem experience by cancer patients, which usually results from the use of conventional chemotherapy and at times is a dose limiting factor for chemotherapy administration. The incidence of thrombocytopenia among solid cancer patients is rather low i.e., ranging between 10%-25% among breast cancer, ovarian and germ cell cancer patients who were treated with intensive chemotherapy. However thrombocytopenia incidence is high among acute leukemia patients (De Bellis, 1999; Dolan, 2000; Elting et al., 2001; Cantor et al., 2003; Dolan, 2005; Miller and De Bellis, 2005; Kuter, 2006; Terranova et al., 2007). Chemotherapies can cause thrombocytopenia by different mechanisms i.e., either by suppressing megakaryopoiesis which is