Combination therapy of cefmenoxime and aminoglycosides for infections in the patients with hematological diseases

Combination therapy of cefmenoxime (CMX) and aminoglycosides (TOB, AMK, GM) was evaluated in 52 cases with infections accompanied by hematological diseases (leukemia, aplastic anemia etc.). Clinical responses among 41 evaluable cases out of 52 were excellent in 8, good in 13, fair in 10, and overall effective rate was 51.2%. The efficacy of this therapy decreased proportionally with the reduction of the number of peripheral mature granulocyte count, but 12 out of 29 cases with granulocyte counts less than 500/μl including 10 cases with 0/μ;l still responded (41.3%). The effective rate was 30% even in the definite immunocompromized hosts, namely in the terminal stages in hematological diseases. Serum concentrations of CMX and aminoglycosides were far above minimum inhibitory concentrations of isolated organisms. No significant side effects were observed in this combination therapy except for eruption in a case and slight renal dysfunction in 2 cases. These results indicate that the combination therapy of CMX and aminoglycosides are useful for the treatment of severe infections complicated with hematological diseases.