Antifungal preventive medications reduce mortality risk by half in the first year following lung transplantation, according to Mayo Clinic research involving 667 patients who received lung transplants from 2005 to 2018.
The retrospective study, published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society, is the largest ever to evaluate the effectiveness of antifungal preventive drugs in lung transplant recipients who are particularly susceptible to invasive fungal infections. These infections are associated with a nearly threefold increase in mortality for lung transplant recipients.
Mayo Clinic researchers used deidentified administrative claims data from OptumLabs Data Warehouse, a database of more than 160 million deidentified records used by researchers to investigate a wide range of health care issues. The study analyzed data for adult patients who underwent single or double lung transplant, or concurrent heart-lung transplant, in the U.S. between Jan. 1, 2005, and Dec. 31, 2018. Of the 667 patients, 385, or 57.8%, received antifungal treatment and 282, or 42.3%, did not. Sixty-five patients died during the study, and all-cause mortality was significantly lower in those patients who received antifungal medications.
