ABSTRACT
Systemic fungal infections have long been recognized as a significant cause of death in immunocompromised patients. As early as 1964, Hutter et al. (1) found that aspergillosis was a contributing factor to the cause of death in 37% of cancer patients in a single institution. Shortly thereafter, Bodey (2) reported an increasing incidence of fungal infections in acute leukemia patients at the National Cancer Institute between
the years 1959 and 1965. Similarly, Maksymiuk et al. (3) summarized the incidence of fungal infections at the M.D. Anderson Hospital from 1976 to 1980. Overall, there were 233 patients with documented fungal infections out of 27,681 total registrants. Thus, the overall rate of fungal infections was 8.4 per 1000 patients, with the highest frequency of fungal infections (14.7%) occurring in acute leukemia patients.
