Treatment of intraabdominal infection with moxalactam.

Forty-eight case report forms for patients with cultures positive for intraabdominal infection treated with moxalactam were reviewed. The infections included abscess or peritonitis due to appendicitis (26); intraabdominal abscess of other causes (7); peritonitis due to bowel perforation (6), bowel infarction (5), or salpingitis (3); and gangrenous cholecystitis (1). Cultures of peritoneal fluid or abscess contents were performed for all patients. Seventy-eight aerobes and 118 anaerobes were isolated from the 48 patients. Thirty-eight patients (79.2%) were cured, therapy failed in nine (18.8%), and one (2%) developed fatal superinfection with Candida. The nine patients for whom treatment failed had a higher frequency of resistant anaerobes in their initial cultures (59%) than did the patients who were cured (29%; P = 0.036). An enterococcal isolate appeared to play a role in at least one treatment failure. There were no serious adverse reactions; eosinophilia (greater than 500 eosinophils/mm3) occurred in 17.4% of the patients, and phlebitis at the intravenous administration site occurred in one patient. Thus moxalactam shows promise as a single agent for the treatment of intraabdominal infections.