Differences on the count of blood cells in pre-chemotherapy and post chemotherapy of patient with cancer in northern Ethiopia 2022, a longitudinal study

Abstract

<title>Abstract</title> <bold>Introduction</bold>: Cancer is a disorder involving uncontrolled growing cells that have the ability to invade and spread to other areas of the body. Drugs for chemotherapy cause damage to non-cancer cells and leads to low count of blood cells. There are controversial findings on the difference of the count on blood cell types. Studies are limited on the count of blood cell type before and after chemotherapy. Therefore, this study aimed to address this gap. <bold>Method</bold>: Institutional based longitudinal study design was done on 354 patients to compare blood cell types profile in pre and post-operative from September1, 2022 to October 1, 2022. Data extraction format was used to collection data source. To assure data quality, first data were entered and cleaned to epidata version 4.6 then exported to SPSS version 23 for analysis. Paired t-test was used to analysis data. <bold>Result: </bold>data was collected from 354 patients. The mean age of the respondent was 41.26 (±16.67). In the first diagnosis, nearly all of them reached stage III 167 (47%) and stage IV 159 (45%). All profiles of blood cell type showed decrement in post chemotherapy compared to pre-chemotherapy. The mean decrement of platelet is 23. 51×10³cells/mm³(p=0.001), red blood cell is 0.63×10⁶cells/mm³(p=0.08) and white blood cell is 2.49 ×10⁶cells/mm³(p=0.012) respectively. <bold>Conclusion:</bold> After chemotherapy, all profiles of blood cells count decreased. This means<bold> </bold>chemotherapy had significant effect on the number of all type of blood cells.