ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Patients with acute leukemia experience prolonged periods of neutropenia due to their disease or its treatment. For this reason, they often develop serious infectious complications. Although antibiotic therapy has improved in recent years, the fatality rate from infection remains high. For the control of infection, protected environment was developed. But because of economic issue, most of chemotherapy with acute myeloid leukemia have conducted in non-protected environment. So this study compared the rate of complete remission, days with neutropenia, rate of fever, rate of positive culture, rate of overt infection and use of antibacterial and antifungal agents with patients within non-protected environment and protected environment, retrospectively. Patients with acute myeloid leukemia during first remission induction chemotherapy were eligible for this study. METHODS: Retrospective analysis was conducted between patients in non-protected (25 patients) and protected environment (14 patients) with acute myeloid leukemia during remission induction chemotherapy. RESULTS: Rate of overt infection, rate of fever, rate of positive culture and rate of use of antibiotics were significantly high in patients within non-protected environment compared with patients within protected environment. There were no differences in rate of complete remission and days of neutropenia. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests protected environment for patients with acute myeloid leukemia during remission induction chemotherapy could reduce rate of overt infection, and rate of use of antibiotics.