[Sepsis in patients with hematological diseases]

Sepsis is one of the important complications on the treatment of severe hematological diseases. In this report, we analyzed sepsis in 309 patients with hematological diseases who were admitted to the First Department of Internal Medicine of Yokohama City University Hospital from 1979 to 1986. Positive blood culture were found in 17.8% (55/309 cases) and total positive cases were 73 including recurrent patients. Positive rate by underlying diseases was 30.3% in acute leukemia, 20.8% in chronic myelocytic leukemia, 17.2% in aplastic anemia, 8.0% in multiple myeloma, 6.0% in malignant lymphoma and 6.5% in others. The organisms causing sepsis were as follows; gram negative bacilli 56.4%, gram positive organisms 34.6%, fungus 6.4% and anaerobic bacteria 2.6%. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was found in 19.2%. The mortality rate of patients with sepsis was 34.2% (25/73 cases). The significant prognostic factors in patients with sepsis were the degree of neutropenia, duration of neutropenia (500 less than microliters), the species of organisms, simultaneous complication with shock and the site of other infections.