Prevalence of acute inflammatory otorhinolaryngological diseases in hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients

The article presents the results of a study of the prevalence of acute (exacerbation of chronic) otorhinolaryngological pathology at the stages of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). The frequency of the studied pathology was assessed at the stage of pre-transplant screening, at the stage before graft engraftment and at the stage after graft engraftment up to 180 days. The study included 1129 cases of HSCT performed at the Raisa Gorbacheva Memorial Research Institute of Pediatric Oncology, Hematology and Transplantation from January 2017 to December 2019. The median age of the patients was 27 years (min – 0,36, max – 73,22). Allogeneic HSCT was performed in 784 (69,4%) cases, autologous HSCT in 345 (30,6%) cases. The power of the study was 0,95. A comparative analysis using the Pearson χ2 criterion revealed that infectious complications were significantly more frequent with allo-HSCT than with auto-HSCT, both at the stage before engraftment (χ2 = 21.8 at p <0.0001) and at the stage after graft engraftment (χ2 = 224,78 at p < 0.0001). It was also shown that acute symptoms of rhinosinusitis prevailed at all stages of HSCT, reaching 5,3% (95% CI 5.0% – 5,6%) at the stage before transplantation, 3,01% (95% CI 2, 8% – 3,2%) at the stage before engraftment, and 8,13% (95% CI 7,67% – 8,60%) at the stage after engraftment. At the stage before engraftment, rhinosinusitis competed with the diagnosis of acute pharyngitis, with a frequency of 34 (36,17%) and 33 (35,11%), respectively. Acute rhinosinusitis, acute rhinitis, and strep throat were the most common diagnoses at all three stages assessed. The rest of the acute inflammatory otorhinolaryngological diagnoses were observed in less than 2% of cases each. Establishing the frequency of acute otorhinolaryngological pathology at the stages of HSCT; understanding the most relevant nosologies. This allows us to focus on further study of the factors of their development, prevention and treatment.