Infectious Pulmonary Disease in Patients Receiving Immunosuppressive Therapy for Organ Transplantation

Abstract

WHOLE-organ homotransplantation is a modality of therapy that has only recently been submitted to clinical investigation in man,1 and reports on the natural history of patients so treated are therefore fragmentary. The clinical course of such patients obviously is profoundly influenced by the chemotherapy that they receive, usually including corticosteroids and immunosuppressive antimetabolites. These compounds have a wide range of effects on the host metabolic reactions, and they so alter immunologic responsiveness that changes in the spectrum of infectious disease may reasonably be expected.Up to February, 1964, 61 patients had received homotransplants or heterotransplants at this center; of these . . .