Can you have plants in your home when you are having a ASCT? Pets? Anything to avoid when returning home after ASCT?

Can you have plants in your home when you are having an A-SCT? Pets, anything to avoid when returning home after A-SCT? Our patients is to have the transplant process be as minimally impactful on patients' lives as is possible, given the constraints of what we're actually doing for patients. For that reason, we have a fully outpatient transplant program at Moffitt, and the overwhelming majority of our patients, over two-thirds of patients, never get admitted to hospital. We see them very carefully. We watch them very closely, but we try and maintain some degree of normality as much as possible for them going through the transplant process. Our recommendations are for patients to have their homes as clean as possible and to engage in sensible practices. But when it comes to houseplants and gardening, our recommendations are they can have plants inside their home, but not to engage in digging in the soil or liberating the soil in any way, because the theory is that that might liberate things into the air and the atmosphere that they could breathe in and put them at risk from that perspective. We ask them not to engage in gardening in the first 90 days after they have their transplant, because again, for that same reason, digging around in the soil is potentially going to liberate moulds and things that we don't want them breathing in. When it comes to pets, there's certain pets that we ask them to remove from their house in that first initial period. And those are usually birds, exotic animals, things like that, that pose an additional risk. But when it comes to cats and dogs, we want them to have their loved pets in their environment as long as they engage in safe practices. So usually we ask them not to pick up after the pets, to have scrupulous hand hygiene if they're rubbing their pets, to not to allow the pets to kiss them in the face and lick their face in that period. But the pets don't have to be removed from the home. We try to have those things that are important to patients in their lives present as long as we can mitigate and minimise those risks. Now, obviously, institutional practices can vary from place to place, but that's our practice at Moffat. So this is an excellent question. And the answers are somewhat operator dependent. Different physicians feel a little bit differently about this. I was one of those physicians that used to feel that post-transplant patients used to stay away from their pets for three months at a time. And I don't necessarily feel that way now, but I do feel certain basic guidelines are important. For instance, I would suggest to patients that it is important not to clean up kitty litter or to take the dog out for a walk. I would tell them to be careful about being scratched by animals. I don't necessarily feel strongly that patients have to house their pets somewhere else post-transplant. I feel that during the transplant period, it's most important to be safe and keep distance from anything that might be a focus of infection. I think it is good to have a clean home environment, but I don't think patients necessarily need to stay away from their houseplants and so on. We do tell them to be careful. Try not to clean out the attic. Try not to clean out the basement. If you're going to be out weeding things or out where there's a lot of fungus and so on, that you might want to be careful and wear a mask and take common sense precautions. But with respect to animals, I think the paradigm is changing over time and people are becoming more liberal about how patients can interact with their pets. Still, it's important to be careful. Stay away from litter. Stay away from poop. And patients, you should manage to stay safe in that setting.