OBJECTIVETo investigate the incidence, risk factors, prognosis and high risk patients of invasive fungal infections (IFI) in patients with hematological diseases.

METHODS: Over 2-week hospitalized patients from January 2007 to December 2008 were retrospectively reviewed. Logistic regression was used to analyze the risk factors of IFI, and recursive partitioning to reveal high risk patients. Incidence of IFI was estimated by cumulative incidence function, and the prognosis by Kaplan-Meier method.

RESULTSA total of 1048 assessable treatment cycles were recorded and 93 cases of IFI were diagnosed, with an incidence of 8.87 per 100 treatment cycles. Multivariate logistic regression revealed the following risk factors: age (OR 1.025, 95% CI 1.010-1.041, P = 0.002), duration of neutropenia (OR 1.028, 95% CI 1.014-1.042, P < 0.0001) and uncontrolled underlying diseases (OR 2.620, 95% CI 1.608-4.268, P = 0.0001). Recursive partitioning found two groups of high risk patients: (1) patients with uncontrolled underlying diseases and neutropenia duration > or = 58 days (7/12, 58.3%), (2) patients with uncontrolled underlying diseases and age > or = 33 years (40/208, 19.2%). At the end of follow-up, 111 cases of IFI were recorded in 451 patients, with a 1-year cumulative incidence of 27.1%. In patients with established IFI, overall survival rate and IFI related mortality rate at 12 weeks after diagnosis were 83.4% and 13.5% respectively.

CONCLUSIONAge, duration of neutropenia and uncontrolled underlying diseases are risk factors of IFI; patients with uncontrolled underlying diseases and age > or = 33 years were at high risk of IFI and need major concern. IFI has a better prognosis and a lower related mortality in this study.