Thursday, August 7, 2008

Day #38 - Invasive Pulmonary Aspergillosis

Today we talked about a case of a patient with acute myelogenous leukemia on chemotherapy who is presenting with febrile neutropenia.

In this case, the patient had a CT scan which had numerous pulmonary nodules with the so-called CT Halo sign (which is a nodule with ground glass haziness surrounding it). This led to the suspicion for an invasive fungal infection, the most commonly encountered in this population is invasive pulmonary aspergillosis.

If you are interested, you can email me and I will send you a copy of a talk I have given on IPA diagnosis and management.

The key to successful treatment is appropriate antifungal therapy and, if possible, recovery of the neutrophil count and reduction of immunosuppression. Treatment is "usually" for ~12 weeks or complete resolution of the clinical syndrome/lesions, whichever is longer.

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