Pneumonia and septicemia due to Pseudomonas cepacia in a patient with cyctic fibrosis

Almost all patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) eventually develop chronic pulmonary infection, and in those patients intensively treated with antibiotics, Pseudomonas aeruginosa has increasingly become either the sole or the predominant organism present in respiratory tract cultures. Other pseudomonas species have been much less frequently encountered. A unusual feature of pseudomonas infection in patients with CF is the tendency for infection to remain limited almost exclusively to the lung. Pseudomonas septicemia is very uncommon. The present report describes a patient with CF whose course was complicated by pneumonia and septicemia caused by P. cepacia.