Erschienen in:
01.10.2007 | Editorial
Invasive aspergillosis in the ICU: an emerging disease
verfasst von:
Wouter Meersseman, Eric Van Wijngaerden
Erschienen in:
Intensive Care Medicine
|
Ausgabe 10/2007
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Excerpt
In
Intensive Care Medicine Trof and colleagues [
1] now present a very useful review of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) in the ICU. This is a very timely topic and an increasingly important one given the emerging data in the area.
Aspergillus spp. are ubiquitous fungi acquired by inhalation of airborne spores. Humans inhale hundreds of conidia per day without adverse consequences, except for a small minority of persons in whom conidia escape phagocytosis by alveolar macrophages and germinate into hyphae. These hyphael elements can be destroyed by circulating neutrophils. If, however, defense systems fail, a life-threatening angioinvasive form of aspergillosis can develop. The bulk of literature about IPA involves patients with classical risk factors such as prolonged neutropenia and transplant recipients [
2,
3]. …
