Abstract
Infection is now the leading cause of death in patients with acute leukemia and lymphoma. This contrasts with the high incidence of hemorrhagic deaths experienced before the advent of modern platelet support systems. The most important factors now limiting the further escalation of doses of antineoplastic chemotherapy are the associated escalation of granulocytopenia and risk of infectious complications. Patients with solid tumors have traditionally received less intensive chemotherapy than patients with hematologic malignancies and have not experienced the high rate of death from infection seen in the latter group. Recent developments in combined chemotherapeutic regimens for various solid tumors, however, will undoubtedly enlarge the group of patients who are granulocytopenic.
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Pennington, J. (1980). Infectious Complications of Malignancy. In: Lokich, J.J. (eds) Clinical Cancer Medicine. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-7235-6_16
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