Fifteen neoplastic patients were examined in a pilot study to evaluate side
effects and efficacy of imipenem (three doses of 500 mg/die, e.v.) as
monochemotherapy of post-operative septic complications. These infections
included: two wound infections, nine lung infections, one case of mixed infection
(spread purulent peritonitis associated with lung infection), one case of urinary
tract infection, one chronic suppurative malleolar ulcer in a patient with
Kaposi's sarcoma, and one case of mediastinitis due to oesophageal perforation
during endoscopic dilatation. Antibiotic treatment was successful in 14 patients,
apyrexia being reached within 2nd to 13th day of treatment (median: 4th day) with
negative microbiologic and radiologic assessment; only in the patient with
chronic suppurative malleolar ulcer, notwithstanding apyrexia, microbiologic
culture indicated the persistence of a pre-treatment pathogen (P. mirabilis).
Side effects included only a slight and transient increase of serum transaminases
in one patient
