Previous occurrence of life-threatening abdominal infection is not a contraindication to bone marrow transplantation.

Protracted severe infections during the post-induction aplastic phase in leukemic patients may cause delay and/or modification of the planned treatment strategy;1 in particular, patients may be considered no longer eligible for bone marrow transplantation (BMT) owing to a high risk of suffering infection reactivation. 2,3 We report on seven patients admitted to our Unit because of acute myeloid leukemia, who received additional intensive chemotherapy followed by allogeneic or autologous BMT, in spite of a recent episode of life-threatening clinically documented abdominal infection (CDAI) (Table 1).