Tallahassee (Fla.) Memorial Hospital is going through emergency supplies amid a national drug shortage to continue chemotherapy treatments for cancer patients, according to a May 15 report from WFSU.
The hospital oversees treatment of about 80 cancer patients and is anticipating a shortage of cancer drugs — including carboplatin and cisplatin, which are used to treat tumors — to persist for several months. The hospital's cancer center recently requested 800 milligrams of cisplatin from regional vendors, though that is expected to last for only a week.
"We've developed a number of mitigation strategies to minimize that impact and risk to each of these very vulnerable patients," Tod Morris, MD, an oncology specialist at Tallahassee Memorial, told the news station. "We're going to do everything we can to provide the highest quality outcomes in this difficult situation."
Across the U.S., near record drug shortages are causing treatment delays for thousands of patients with cancer and other diseases, according to The New York Times.