[Infectious problems posed by patients with a renal graft and submitted to an immunosuppressive treatment]

Infective complications are analysed in 100 transplanted patients all receiving corticosteroid and azathioprine. 170 infective episodes were noted, only 13 patients never had infection during the period of observation. Two complications were dominated by their gravity : pneumopathies (n equals 29) fatal in 20.6% of cases, and septicemia (n equals 21) fatal in 28.5% of cases. Alone they represented 75% of the overall mortality in this series. More than 50% of failures due to death or detransplantation, were directly due to infection. The results show that this type of complication represents the main limiting factor to renal grafts in patients submitted to immunosuppressor treatment which depresses non-specifically, the whole immune response.