Clinical details of the patients

The clinical details of the patients involved, including their underlying diagnosis, any other organisms isolated and potential impact of the infection are summarized in Table 1. It is important to note that although all patients involved were under some degree of immunosuppression due to their underlying condition or treatment, one was post transplant. The most common underlying diagnosis (6/15) was acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) and other blood cancers such as Non Hodgkin’s lymphoma, anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) accounting for 3 more cases. There were four cases of CNS malignancy, one of a non-haematological malignancy and one post transplant. The most common cause of admission (8/14) was febrile neutropenia, which is defined as pyrexia with a low (<0.5 x 10 ⁹) neutrophil count ²⁶, the rest were either routine admissions or admissions otherwise unrelated to infection: one relapse and one new diagnosis. Standard infection control measures include isolation of symptomatic patients, even before laboratory diagnosis is available, where possible or cohorting if single rooms are not available. Daily communication between the infection control team and senior unit nursing staff, informed by any virology results was used to determine the correct management for each potentially infected patient.

This table summarises the clinical details including the underlying diagnosis as well as other microorganisms isolated for patients 1-9,11,12,13,14 and 15. Patient 10 had a genetically different strain of human parainfluenza viruses type 3 (HPIV3) and was therefore not included in the final analysis. There was only one fatality (patient 6) that was unrelated to infection with HPIV3. Negative numbers of days indicate that the patient became symptomatic before the admission when they were diagnosed for HPIV3. This does not exclude a potential infection prior to this admission (see Figure 5).

* blood culture

AD = admission date

SD = sample date

SOD=symptom onset date

CNS=central nervous system

AML=Acute myeloid leukemia

ALL = Acute lymphoblastic leukemia

ALCL = Anaplastic large cell lymphoma