SURVEILLANCE OF ORAL CULTURES FOR ENTEROBACTERIACEAE DURING BONE-MARROW TRANSPLANTATION

Bone marrow-transplanted patients can suffer from severe life-threaten ing infections. Oral bacterial cultures were collected from a group of 40 patients prior to and following bone marrow transplantation every 3 days, following initial preparation and eradication of oral infectio ns. The samples were grown on the Titertek-Enterobac kit specific for En terobacteriaceae. In 426 oral cultures 30.5% grew gram-negative bac teria, 76.6% of them were Enterobacteriaceae. Young male patients had 8.3% positive cultures at the study start, a percentage which constant ly increased during later periods. Older patients did not follow the s ame pattern. Also, the allogeneic transplantation group had a higher p ercentage of Enterobacteriaceae than the autologous group (49.0 versus 19.5%). In blood cultures 18 out of the 94 positive ones showed the p resence of Enterobacteriaceae. The most commonly found microorganisms in oral cultures were Klebsiella oxytoca (23%), Enterobacter cloacae ( 18%) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (15%). The decrease in the positive ora l cultures from 35.0% during the pretransplantation period to 5.4% clo se to the transplantation, demonstrates that the preparatory protocol used for the prevention of oral infections was highly effective.