Summary of infectious complications occurring in patients with Hodgkin's disease.

Abstract

The charts and autopsy protocols of 51 patients with Hodgkin's disease were reviewed. Thirty-five patients were found to have significant infectious complications during their clinical course. The majority of these problems occurred during the last quarter of illness, when chemotherapy was ineffective. Bacterial infections, especially septicemia, were most frequent although a relatively large number of viral and fungal diseases were found. Single episodes of toxoplasmosis and pneumocystis were also discovered in this series. Thirty-five of the 51 patients were infected at the time of death; however, infection per se could not be shown to adversely affect survival for the entire group. However, each of the 4 documented infections with cryptococcosis was primarily responsible for the death of the affected patients. Nevertheless, all patients had active Hodgkin's disease at autopsy. No relationship of infection to various forms of therapy or to leukopenia was found for bacterial infections; however, 90% of the patients with fungal disease and 100% of the patients with cytomegalic inclusion disease received corticosteroids.