Please Don't Eat the Salads

Abstract

Nearly half the infections in patients who have cancer with prolonged, severe granulocytopenia have been shown to be caused by hospital-acquired organisms that have colonized the alimentary canal.¹ Some acquired organisms are particularly virulent in the granulocytopenic patient; for example, bacteremia may develop in 40 to 70 per cent of such patients who are colonized with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Hospital sources of aerobic bacteria that are major causes of infection in these patients have been emphasized in numerous publications, but there appears to be insufficient appreciation of the potential role of food as a major source of these organisms, with . . .