Staphylococcus aureus septicaemia in a patient with cystic fibrosis.

UNLABELLED: Although bacterial colonisation of bronchi may occur from early childhood onwards, infections extending beyond the lungs are uncommon in patients with cystic fibrosis. A 12-year-old boy with cystic fibrosis, receiving oral corticosteroids for 3 weeks because of allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis, experienced pneumonia and septicaemia caused by Staphylococcus aureus. He was treated with flucloxacillin, ticarcillin-clavulanate, aztreonam, cefazolin and rifampin according to resistance testing of S. aureus cultured from the blood. On day 25 the patient finally had recovered.

CONCLUSION: Systemic steroid therapy for allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis may favour life-threatening systemic bacterial infection which is rare in the immunocompetent patient with cystic fibrosis.