Aspergillus colonization of the nose and pulmonary aspergillosis in neutropenic patients: a retrospective study.

Fungal infections are definitely increasing in neutropenic patients with hematologic malignancies. In view of a previous report on a likely correlation between nose cultures positive for Aspergillus spp. and pulmonary aspergillosis, a retrospective study on 306 consecutive neutropenic patients was performed. Twenty-six patients had one or more nose cultures positive for Aspergillus: thirteen of them developed pulmonary aspergillosis. On the other hand, only twenty out of the remaining 280 patients with negative nose cultures developed this fungal pneumonia (p less than 0.00001). Even if negative results do not obviously exclude the possibility of invasive aspergillosis, nose cultures positive for Aspergillus might prove helpful in predicting this fungal infection in febrile neutropenic patients.