Oral Ciprofloxacin Prophylaxis in Patients Undergoing High Dose Therapy and Autologous Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation

Antibiotic prophylaxis is usually used in allogeneic stem cell transplantation, but its use in Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation (ASCT) is controversial. We evaluated the efficacy of ciprofloxacin prophylaxis in ASCT. To identify the efficacy of ciprofloxacin on the incidence of neutropenic fever and its complications, 72 patients that had been admitted to Taleghani Hospital for ASCT between 2010 and 2012 were evaluated in our study. Oral ciprofloxacin 500 mg every 12 h was administered to 30 patients on the same day of high dose chemotherapy until the first febrile episode or until the recovery of neutropenia and the results were analyzed and compared with the historical control group 42 other transplanted patients who had not previously received ciprofloxacin. The incidence of neutropenic fever was 80% with no difference between the two groups. But in ciprofloxacin group, duration of fever (1.7 days VS 3.5 days P=0.017), hospitalization due to stem cell transfusion (18.2 days VS 12.2 days p=0.03), incidence of bacteremia 3.3% VS 33.3%, p=0.002) and platelet recovery (13.9 VS 17.7 days= 0.035) and platelet transfusions (P=0.04) were significantly lower than the control group no side effects and no delay in. Based on this study oral ciprofloxacin prophylaxis is rational, efficacious and economic in ASCT.