A prospective study to determine the role of crp during febrile neutropenia in pediatric malignancy

Febrile Neutropenia is a common and dreaded complication in children treated for malignancy. Current multi-modality aggressive treatments of malignancy affects body’s immune system through various pathways and render the patient susceptible to infection by various infectious agents. Apart from infection there are other causes of fever in patients with malignancy (tumor itself, drug and blood product infusion related). But suspicion of bacterial infection in febrile episode and early institution of antibiotic therapy is of paramount importance for overall survival of the patient. Along with this it is crucial to monitor the response to antibiotic therapy. For both this purposes, we need a good diagnostic and predictive inflammatory marker. C-ReactiveProtein is a cheap and widely available inflammatory marker is under investigation in this study to detect infection and monitor response to antibiotic therapy.