Septic pulmonary embolism in patients on chronic haemodialysis with Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia

Twenty-one cases of septic pulmonary embolism were selected from a series o f 76 patients on chronic haemodialysis diagnosed of S. aureus bacteremia. N inety percent of patients underwent dialysis through an arteriovenous fistu la and 10% by means of a prosthetic access. The most common symptoms were f ever (100%), pleuritic pain (66%) and productive cough (55%); twenty-four p ercent of patients had inflammatory signs at vascular accesses. All patient s had some symptoms indicative of pulmonary pathology and all of them had p ositive blood cultures and findings in the chest X-ray, The clinical course was favourable in 100% of cases. Accesses were lost only in the two cases with prosthetic material. The diagnosis was obtained by chest X-ray and boo d cultures. Other more sophisticated tests did not improve the diagnostic y ielding.