Introduction: Autologous bone marrow (BMT) or peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) are increasingly used to treat hematological malignancies and solid tumors. The reported incidence of neurological complications varies greatly among the different centers, ranging from 11 to 39%.
Patients and methods: In order to gain insight into the real incidence of early neurological complications (first 6 weeks) after autologous transplantation, we analyzed a series of 254 patients who underwent BMT/PBSCT for hematological malignancies (212 cases) or solid tumors (42 cases).
Results: Seven patients died during the early posttransplant period (incidence: 2.4%), and one of these deaths was related to a neurological complication. Eight patients developed neurologic complications (incidence: 2.8%). None of the patients developed cerebral hemorrhage during the early posttransplant period, despite a rather restrictive platelet transfusion support. Two out of 13 patients diagnosed AML and 3 out of 36 patients diagnosed Hodgkin's disease developed early neurological complications.
Discussion and conclusions: The neurological morbidity related to autologous transplantation was very low in our series of patients as compared to that reported in previous studies. This difference could be explained, at least in part, by a more restrictive definition of early neurologic complications.