Nurses’ internal contamination by antineoplastic drugs in hospital centers: a cross-sectional descriptive study

Exposure to Antineoplastic Drugs in Occupational Settings: A Systematic Review of Biological Monitoring Data

“…Santos et al [ 34 ] found higher levels of CPA in pharmacists and nurses with respect to unexposed controls from the hospital staff. Among the 74 French nurses investigated by Villa et al [ 31 ], 45 reported an internal AD contamination. Among those, 37.8% and 33.3% presented internal contamination with CPA and IP, respectively, with the highest median concentration close to the LOQ of the analytical methods.…”

“…Among the 357 urine samples analyzed, 3 were positive with a median concentration of 36.3 pg/mL. In Villa et al [ 31 ], 42.2% of 45 nurses with AD internal contamination were positive for MTX, with the highest median level close to the LOQ of 2.5 ng/L.…”

“…The authors suggested a possible environmental contamination, as 5-FU was detected in many workplace surfaces and on the gloves of a technician involved in the compounding of this drug. Among the 45 nurses with an internal AD contamination investigated by Villa et al [ 31 ], 17.8% presented positive results for FBAL, with the highest median concentration of 41.5 ng/L. When 73 French and African healthcare professionals were examined for 5-FU contamination through the analysis of the FBAL urinary content, 9.6% presented results above the LOQ [ 43 ].…”

Reporting environmental contamination results to healthcare workers could play a crucial role in decreasing the risk of occupational exposure to antineoplastic drugs

“…The misuse of protective gloves and gowns suggest that there is a perception that exposures are inconsequential or so rare that they do not justify their use ( 8 ). The exposures observed through urine ( 32 ) or blood samples ( 33 , 34 ) clearly reflect this lack of effectiveness or compliance with the preventive measures put in place.…”

Developing a Fast Ultra-High-Performance Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry Method for High-Throughput Surface Contamination Monitoring of 26 Antineoplastic Drugs

“…Thanks to dedicated AD preparation units inside the hospital pharmacies and the growing care in creating accurate preparation guidelines [9,10], the healthcare personnel's risk of absorption of high quantities ADs has seen a significant decrease [11]. This lowering of detected urinary levels, along with the growing number of ADs chemistries, makes the creation of a unique method for exposition monitoring extremely complex and hardly sustainable, even considering the need to create different extraction methods for each class of ADs and consequently to have more runs for each sample [12][13][14]. For this reason, surface contamination monitoring is becoming the first choice for occupational AD risk assessments, usually performed through a wipe sampling test [15][16][17][18][19][20][21].…”