Pulmonary complications following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in children

Pediatric data about early or long-term pulmonary complications of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) are limited. Here we aimed to evaluate children who were treated with HSCT in the last 10 years and developed pulmonary complications following HSCT and to determine their risk factors associated with pulmonary complications. In this retrospective study, we evaluated 195 patients for the development of pulmonary complications after HSCT within a 10 years of period. Pulmonary complications developed in 71 (36.4%) patients. Of the 71 patients who had pulmonary complications, 60 had one pulmonary complication, 11 had two pulmonary complications. Pulmonary complications were diagnosed as early in 42 (51.2%) and late in 40 (48.8%) episodes. Pulmonary complications were infectious in 28 (34.1%), noninfectious in 20 (24.4%) and both infectious and nonfectious in 34 (41.5%) episodes. Pulmonary complications developed significantly more frequently in patients with malignancy, congenital immune deficiency and with at least one pulmonary disease before HSCT. The number of patients who had myeloablative conditioning regimen was significantly higher in the group of patients without pulmonary complications than the group with pulmonary complications. However, in multivariate analysis, none of these variables were shown to be effective in predicting pulmonary complications after HSCT (p>0.05). During follow up, 54 (65.8%) episodes recovered, 20 (24.3%) episodes resulted with death due to pulmonary complications, 6 (7.3%) episodes had chronic pulmonary disease (bronchiolitis obliterans (BO) and bronchiolitis obliterans organizing pneumonia (BOOP)); 2 patients (each patient with one episode) were lost to follow up. In conclusion; identifying children who are at risk for severe pulmonary complications and close longitudinal follow-up after HSCT by pediatric pulmonologists is mandatory to increase survival and life quality of these patients.