Pasteurella multocida septicemia. Experience at a cancer hospital.

Pasteurella multocida most commonly infects patients with animal contacts. Life-threatening systemic disease is distinctly uncommon in otherwise healthy persons and usually occurs in patients with chronic predisposing disease. Two cases of sepsis occurred in a cancer hospital, and we surmise that specific predisposing factors existed in our patients as in prior reported cases of sepsis in patients without cancer. These factors include animal contact, open wounds, and, most important, advanced hepatic disease.