Epidemiology of invasive fungal diseases on the basis of autopsy reports

Abstract

Invasive fungal diseases (IFDs) are a major cause of morbidity and mortality among immunocompromised patients and cost to health services. They are difficult to prevent, diagnose, and treat. This difficulty in diagnosis leads us to treat them empirically by using several tools, including epidemiological data, non-culture methods and images. Most of the available epidemiological information may not be accurate because we are dealing with a disease that only has an estimated 50% chance of being diagnosed before death. Therefore, autopsy reports become a valuable tool, not only to define the real epidemiology, but also to address the trend in pre-mortem diagnosis, which is the best marker available to prove the efficiency of the research in IFD. This article reviews and analyzes the data on IFD obtained from 11 single-center, multi-center and nationwide autopsy reports published between 2008 and 2013, and also discusses the issues we need to address in order to improve the quality of the epidemiological data on invasive fungal disease obtained from autopsy reports.