Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Disease

Infection and disease recurrence are the two major causes of death in the stem-cell transplant recipient. Although current advances in hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) have attempted to improve overall survival by limiting these complications, few have been able to simultaneously decrease both. More intensive therapies reduce the risk of relapse at the cost of increasing infectious risk, whereas efforts to reduce infectious death often require less intensive conditioning regimens with a resultant increase in relapse rate.