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Chemotherapy-induced neutropenia makes cancer patients susceptible to infections, which are the leading cause of death. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the patterns of infection, causative pathogens and pattern of antimicrobial therapy in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy in a D. teaching university of Korea. The medical records of patients who have been hospitalized with infections between September 1999 and August 2000 while receiving chemotherapy were retrospectively reviewed 56 patients (96 episode of infections) were hospitalized with infections (48 patients with solid tumor and 8 with hematologic cancer). Lower respiratory infection was the most common infection (48%) in patients with solid tumor while unexplained fever (28%), followed by lower respiratory infection (17%) and UTI (17%) were the most common infections in hematological cancer patients. 63% of the overall infection was caused by gram-negative organisms and 23% by gram-positive organisms and 14.5% by candida sp. In neutropenic patient, the incidence of infection caused by gram-positive organisms was 31% while the incidence of infection caused by gram-negative organisms was 56%. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Enterobacter sp, Acinetobacter sp, and Citrobacter sp were commonly isolated gram-negative pathogens. Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococci and CNS were commonly isolated gram-positive pathogens. Both the median duration of G-CSF use and neutropenia were 3 days. The dual antimicrobial therapy with aminoglycoside and ESP/β-lacta-mase inhibitor was the most commonly used as an empiric antimicrobial therapy in febrile neutropenic patients since the most common causative pathogens of infection were gram-negative bacilli such as Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter sp. There was no difference in the types of pathogens between neutropenic and non-neutropenic patients.
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