Infectious complications in 126 patients treated with high-dose chemotherapy and autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation.

The effect of an extensive prophylactic antimicrobial regimen was prospectively assessed in 126 patients after high-dose chemotherapy and autologous PBSC. They received ciprofloxacin (500 mg/12 h), acyclovir (200 mg/6 h), and itraconazole (200 mg/12 h) orally until neutrophil recovery. Febrile patients received i.

[Invasive pulmonary aspergillosis: a study of 33 cases].

Invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) is an infectious complication appearing mainly in immunosuppressed patients, whose diagnosis is often difficult and lately made, and that usually bears a dismal prognosis. Patients diagnosed as having IPA from 1989 to 1994 were retrospectively analyzed. Probable IPA was diagnosed on the basis of a positive culture for Aspergillus together with a consistent radiological image.

Epidemiologic evidence of transmission of donor-related bacterial infection through a transplanted heart.

This study describes a patient who had fulminant infectious myocarditis as a result of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus after receiving a heart transplant from an infected donor. There was complete concordance of typing results between donor and recipient strains that were different from the 20 isolates with which they were compared. Molecular epidemiologic study provided compelling evidence that a transplanted organ can transmit a bacterial infection from the donor to the recipient.