CLINICAL-FEATURES OF STENOTROPHOMONAS-MALTOPHILIA PNEUMONIA IN IMMUNOCOMPROMISED PATIENTS

Between January 1988 and December 1992, 68 patients admitted to our De partment of Internal Medicine with haematological malignancies or soli d tumours showed colonization of the respiratory tract with Stenotroph omonas maltophilia. To characterize the significance of respiratory tr act colonization by S. maltophilia, we retrospectively reviewed the me dical records of the 68 patients colonized with this organism. Twenty- nine of these 68 patients developed pneumonia, with S. maltophilia bei ng implicated in 10 cases. The majority of these 10 patients showed lo bular infiltration on chest X-ray. Pleural effusion was observed in tw o (20%) of the 10 patients. All 68 strains of S. maltophilia were resi stant to imipenem. Latamoxef was effective against 98.5% of strains, w hile minocycline was effective against 100% of strains. This report de scribes the clinical features of nosocomial S. maltophilia pneumonia i n immunocompromised patients.