Urgent cancer care: Hotline and Clinical Decisions Unit

Sometimes people with cancer need urgent advice or care about treatment side-effects or other complications of cancer. We have specially trained staff who can provide expert advice.

The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre Hotline

Our Hotline team is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week if you need urgent advice or care related to your cancer treatment or diagnosis if:

  • You are a patient currently being treated by The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre; or
  • You completed treatment with us in the last six weeks; or
  • You completed immunotherapy in the last 12 months

Our Hotline is staffed by specialist cancer nurses who can provide expert advice. They are specially trained to help with complications of cancer and any side-effects from your treatment. They can also access any information they need from your cancer health records so they can provide the right advice.

You can call them for free any time on:

0800 169 5555

If you are deaf or hard of hearing, you can call our Hotline using the Relay UK service.

If our Hotline team think you need further assessment, they will refer you to the right place. This could be:

  • Our Clinical Decisions Unit - more information below
  • NHS 111
  • Your GP
  • Community services in your local area - for example, an urgent community response (UCR) service or walk-in centre
  • Your local Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) unit
  • A hospital emergency department (sometimes known as ED or A&E)

Clinical Decisions Unit

Our Clinical Decisions Unit (CDU) specialises in urgent and emergency cancer care. The unit is open during the day from Monday to Friday and is based on Level 2 of Clatterbridge Cancer Centre - Liverpool (CCC-Liverpool).

Patients must be referred to the CDU by our Hotline team, their cancer care team, another team within The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre or their GP. (Please don't come directly to CDU.) It provides urgent assessment and initial treatment for people with cancer who have become unwell or developed complications that need urgent clinical assessment. These include:

  • Serious side-effects from treatment
  • Serious deterioration in their health related to their cancer diagnosis
  • Suspected or confirmed neutropenic sepsis
  • Suspected or confirmed metastatic spinal cord compression
  • Other complications from cancer or cancer treatment

Once patients have been assessed and had any immediate care needed, the CDU team will monitor their condition and arrange next steps. For example:

  • Discharging people home if well enough
  • Admitting them to one of our inpatient wards
  • Discharging them to community-based care or intermediate (step-down) care
  • Transferring them to another hospital if they need care for conditions other than cancer