Postoperative relapse of pulmonary mucormycosis: The difficulty of imaging recurrent disease in the neutropenic patient.

Abstract: Pulmonary mucormycosis is a rare, yet rapidly progressive infection that carries a devastating prognosis. As with pulmonary aspergillosis, angioinvasiveness is a hallmark of disease and causes infarction and necrosis of host tissue. Compared to other angioinvasive fungi, the pace of mucormycosis is usually very fast and spreading to contiguous structures such as mediastinum and heart seems to occur more frequently. We report the case of a patient with localized angioinvasive pulmonary mucormycosis, which was initially mistaken for invasive pulmonary aspergillosis and, following surgical resection, showed early relapse from radiologically inconspicuous postoperative seroma. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]