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Closed-system transfer devices are sealed connectors meant to stop chemotherapy escaping when it is prepared and given. US standards require them for giving hazardous drugs, but a Cochrane review found only weak observational studies and could not say whether they reduce staff exposure.

PET-CT scans for cancer measure how much sugar tissues take up, and many people now take newer diabetes and weight-loss medicines that change sugar handling. The main European guideline predates their wide use and says nothing about them, while reports suggest they can blur parts of the scan. There is no agreed advice on whether to pause them.

Frailty is the strongest predictor of who will be harmed by treatment, but it is rarely measured. Software can estimate it automatically from existing records and flag patients who need a closer look.

Frozen gloves, tight gloves and cooling machines all aim to protect the nerves during taxane chemotherapy, but many patients take the cold ones off. Matching the method to what each person tolerates may matter as much as which method is best on paper.

Many hospitals still ask for a kidney blood test within three months before a CT scan with contrast dye, and cancel scans when it is missing. Since 2024 NICE has said a test from the past six months will do, and that when there is none, three questions about kidney disease and acute illness can decide whether a test is needed. How safely and how widely this works is not measured.

Midline catheters, longer drips in the upper arm, carry fewer bloodstream infections than PICCs and are being used for chemotherapy. No guideline read says whether drugs that damage tissue if they leak can safely go through one.

Many people with cancer inject a blood thinner called low molecular weight heparin every day to treat a clot, especially those with bowel or stomach cancers, who are also the people most often needing an endoscopy. The main endoscopy guideline only covers this drug as a short bridge for people coming off warfarin, so teams have no agreed plan for when to stop and restart it.

Some hospitals ask the nurse to wear a mask, put a mask on the patient and ask the patient to turn their head away while a chemotherapy port is accessed. No national guideline read asks for this, and no study of whether it prevents port infections was found. A comparison would settle whether it should be standard or can be dropped.

Before chemotherapy is given, two trained staff check the drug, the dose and the patient. When treatment is given at home, the second person may now join by video. The 2024 US standards allow this but say no well-designed study has measured whether it is as safe.

After lutetium-177 treatment for prostate cancer or neuroendocrine tumours, patients are told how long to avoid pregnancy or breastfeeding, but the numbers differ by source: 3 months, 14 weeks, 4 months, 6 months or 7 months. A single table, with the reasoning for each figure, would let teams and families give the same answer.

Before radiotherapy, people who could be pregnant are asked whether they might be; some departments also do a pregnancy test for everyone in an age range. Which approach misses fewer pregnancies, and at what cost in delays and false alarms, has never been compared. Some cancers make the pregnancy hormone themselves and can give a false positive test.

Teeth that might cause trouble are often taken out before radiotherapy to the jaw, to lower the risk of the bone breaking down later. How long the sockets should heal before radiotherapy starts is not settled: waiting longer may help the jaw but delays cancer treatment, and the studies so far disagree.

When blood is taken from a line, a small amount is usually drawn off and thrown away first. How much is needed has never been set by a guideline that could be read, and the only recent study was in intensive care, not in people with ports having chemotherapy.