1973 Volume 14 Issue 12 Pages 1141-1145
Combination chemotherapy with large dose of bacteriocidal antibiotics for severe infectious episodes of patients with acute leukemia was studied. One antibiotic was selected from either Carbenicillin (CB-PC, 15∼20 Gm/day) or Cephalothin (CET, 4∼12 Gm/day) and the other from Kanamycin (KM, 2 Gm/day), Streptomycin (SM, 2 Gm/day) or Gentamicin (GM, 120∼160 mgm/day) and two antibiotics combined were administered intravenously at regular intervals, i.e., CB-PC or CET every 8 hours by 1 hour infusion and KM, SM, or GM every 12 hours by push. Among 106 infectious episodes in 42 leukemia patients, 46% showed excellent response, 26% good response and 28% failure to these combination antibiotic treatment. There was no difference in response rate between CB-PC group and CET group. Response rate of KM-group (80.5%) was superior to that of SM group (64.7%) and GM group (65.2%). Peripheral granulocyte counts of these patients were markedly reduced, the median of which was only 270/cmm. There was no positive correlation between response rate and the number of peripheral granulocytes in infectious episodes with marked granulocytopenia. There seemed to be no serious organ toxicity by present combination antibiotics therapy, judging from BUN and SGPT levels.
