Abstract

It is we11 known that many immunological functions such as humoral antibody, T lympho- cyte, B lymphocyte, K cell, NK cell and macrophage are decreased in patient with malignant tumor. And the differences in rate of infection, pattern and organism are expected between malignant and benign disease. So, authors examined the medical and laboratory records of 2638 patients who had under- went surgery at Seoul National University Hospital from January 1991 to December 199l and extracted 121 patients who were bacteriologically identified postaperatively excluding the patients with preoperative fever. 1) Number of patients with malignant disease was 86, with 61 males and 25 females, whose mean age was 55. 35 patients in benign disease with 18 males and 17 females, whose mean age was 42. 2) Rate of infection was 6.08% in malignant diseases, 2.85% in benign diseases, which had meaningful difference(P < 0.05). 3) Pancreatobiliary disease had the highest infection rate(15.6%) among malignant diseases and kidney allograft had the highest among benign diseases. 4) Respiratory infection(15.8%), intraabdominal abscess(13.5%) and wound infection(12.0%) were frequent in malignant diseases, but bacteremia(16.7%), wound infection(12.5%) and respiratory infection(10.4%) were frequent in benign diseases. 5) E. coli(20.8%), Coagulase(-) Staphylococccus(18.5%) and Pseduomonas(16.2%) were frequent in malignant disease, but Staphylococcus(18.6%), Enterobacter(13.6%) and Enterococcus (11.9%) were frequent in benign disease, Meaningfully frequent organisms were E. coli and Pseduomonas in malignant disease, Enterobacter in benign disease. In conclusion, infectious complications were more freguent in malignant disease than in benign disease and differences in pattern and organism of infection existed between them.

• Keywords: Infection, Malignant disease