Antibiotic therapy in hematological neutropenic patients: what is the news?

摘要

Bacterial infection is a very common complication in hematological neutropenic patients1 whose treatment is extremely challenging for several reasons.First of all, often these infections are caused by resistant pathogens. A recent retrospective analysis of 382 febrile episodes in patients with acute myeloid leukemia showed that the most frequent isolates among the 64% of cases with documented microbiological identification were multidrug-resistant (MDR) Gram-negative bacteria.2 Acquisition of MDR Gram-negative bacilli in this setting is frequently related to previous antibiotic therapy, and higher mortality rates were observed in cancer patients with bacteremia due to these MDR pathogens.