Infectious complications of chemotherapy in clinically aggressive mature B and T cell lymphomas
European Journal of Internal Medicine , 04/03/2012
Clinical Article
Alonso JJ et al. – Of AMBTL patients treated with first line chemotherapy, more than half of the relevant infections occurred without febrile neutropenia. A poor performance status was the only independent variable associated with the risk of febrile neutropenia or infection in the course of first line chemotherapy
Methods- A prospective observational study of all the patients treated with first line chemotherapy for AMBTL in our Lymphoma Unit, in the setting of a community based teaching hospital, was performed.
- 183 infectious episodes were registered in 97 (49%) of the 198 patients.
- Seventy-nine of them (43%) were associated to febrile neutropenia (27% of the patients).
- Microbiological documentation was obtained in 46% and only clinical documentation in 15%; 39% were classified as fever of unknown origin.Gram negative bacilli were the predominant aetiology.
- There were several variables related to risk of infection, but in multivariate analysis only a poor initial performance status was predictive of the risk of febrile neutropenia and infection during the first line chemotherapy.
