Saccharomyces Fungemia

¹ Creighton University School of Medicine, Omaha, Nebraska, and University of Oklahoma School of Medicine, Oklahoma City

Fungal septicemia due to Saccharomyces is described in a patient previously treated with heavy doses of antibiotics for suspected prosthetic valve endocarditis. No previous reports of infection due to Saccharomyces were found in the literature. This report illustrates that patients with prosthetic heart valves may be susceptible to septicemia or endocarditis caused by fungi that are usually nonpathogenic. This is especially true if the patients have received large doses of antibiotics. The fact that this patient survived after treatment with amphotericin B indicates that medical therapy may be successful in some patients with prosthetic heart valves who have had fungi cultured from the blood.