Phycomycosis (So-called Mucormycosis)

Problem of Diagnosis

Abstract

Phycomycosis, or the so-called mucormycosis, is an acute and fatal disease. The patients with this disease have a very poor prognosis. No work at all has so far been done in Japan concerning its diagnosis in the field of internal medicine.
The paper to be read at this symposium deals with 57 cases of mucormycosis which have been described to date in Japan and compares them with those which have been reported in other countries since 1960. The Japanese cases consisted of 14 patients with a pulmonary type of mucormycosis, 10 patients with an alimentary type, 10 patients with rhino-orbito-cerebral type and 23 patients with a disseminated type.
Attention has been focused on diabetes mellitus as a predisposing disease of mucormycosis, whereas such is acute myelogenous leukemia in 20 (35.1%) cases of mucormycosis in Japan. Blood disease accounts for 50.9% (29 cases) while diadetes mellitus accounts for only 5.3% (3 cases).
The possible involvement of this disease in the terminal infection in various blood disease including acute myelogenous leukemia should be taken into consideration as one of the diagnostic problems of this disease in internal medicine. When a suspicion of the pulmonary type of mucormycosis is enteratained, lung biopsy, bronchoscopy and detailed examination of sputum should be carried out where possible, since these procedures are the only means to detect the disease in its early stage. For the rhino-orbital type early detection is imperative, because many of its victims can be saved from death if a definite diagnosis of the disease can be established in its early stage.