Clinical approach to fungal pneumoniae in patients with hematological malignancies and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation recipients

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an important increase of the invasive fungal infections in patients with hematological malignancies and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation recipients in recent years. Fungal pneumonia constitutes the main cause of morbidity and mortality due to invasive fungal infections in these patients. Invasive fungal infections in general and fungal pneumonia in particular are important causes of morbidity and mortality in these patients. Aspergillus spp. and other molds such as Zygomycetes, Fusarium or Scedosporium spp. represent the most frequently isolated microorganisms in these pneumoniae. Rarely, pneumonia could be due to other 'no-molds' fungal agents such as Candida spp, Cryptococcus spp., Trichosporon spp. or Pneumocystis jirovecii. Understanding the fungal epidemiology, risk factors and clinical features will be effective in the determination of the appropriate approach to fungal pneumoniae in these patients.