Comparison of plasma sterilizer and conventional laminar flow room in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients.

Patients receiving allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) are typically placed in a laminar air flow room until hematopoietic reconstitution occurs. In this study, we compared the differences in clinical outcomes between patients receiving allo-HSCT in a conventional laminar flow room (n = 200) and those receiving allo-HSCT in a plasma sterilizer environment (n = 201). The overall infection rates (20.4% vs 25.5%, P = 0.224) and the sites of infection (sepsis, perianal infection, and catheter-related infection) were comparable between the two groups. Additionally, the engraftment times were comparable between the two groups in terms of time to allo-HSCT, leukocyte engraftment time, and platelet engraftment time. The 100-day posttransplantation clinical outcomes were also comparable between the two groups in terms of the probability of overall survival (98.5% vs 99.5%, P = 0.316), leukemia-free survival (96.5% vs 96.5%, P = 0.991), the cumulative incidence of relapse (2.0% vs 3.0%, P = 0.523), non-relapse mortality (1.5% vs 0.5%, P = 0.316) and acute graft-versus-host disease (23.4% vs 22.0%, P = 0.723). Thus, our results demonstrated that receiving allo-HSCT via a plasma sterilizer did not increase the risk of pre-engraftment infection, and the clinical outcomes of these patients were comparable to those of patients in a conventional laminar flow room.