Opportunistic fungal infection among cancer patients. A ten-year autopsy study.

A high incidence of opportunistic fungal infections among cancer patients has been a pressing problem confronting clinicians. The fungal infections in 3,278 consecutive autopsies at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital during a ten-year period (1966-1975) were studied. There were 1,204 (36.7%) cancer patients; 85 (7.1%) of these patients had concomitant fungal infections. The incidence was 9.3% during the last five-year period; 5.1% during the first five-year period. Candidiasis was the most frequent fungal infection (52.2%) among these patients, followed by aspergillosis (31.1%), mucormycosis, cryptococcosis, histoplasmosis and nocardiosis. The leukemias and lymphomas were the most frequent malignancies associated with fungal infections. However, in this study, unlike others, the incidences of fungal infection in patients with some solid tumors were also high, especially those in patients with cancers of the colon and pancreas.