OBJECTIVE To retrospectively analyze the baseline data of patients with pulmonary mucormycosis (PM) and explore the clinical characteristics, imaging characteristics, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of the patients with PM.

METHODS A total of 28 patients with PM who were treated in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Shandong First Medical University from Jan. 2023 to Dec. 2024 were recruited as the research subjects. The clinical data of the enrolled patients were recorded, including baseline data, clinical manifestations, data of clinical laboratory tests, result of etiological diagnosis, imaging examinations, treatment programs and prognosis.

RESULTS The ratio of male to female was 2.5∶1 among the 28 patients. Diabetes mellitus (46.43%) was the most common underlying disease. Fever (67.86%), cough (67.86%) and dyspnea (67.86%) were the major clinical manifestations. Involvement of multiple lung lobes (82.14%), mostly presenting as mass shadows (89.29%), nodules (42.86%) and hollows (39.29%) were the pulmonary CT imaging findings. The positive rate of the targeted next generation sequencing (tNGS) was 100.00% in diagnosis of PM, higher than that of other three types of diagnostic methods (fungal smear, fungal culture, histopathological examination). All of the 28 patients were treated with simple antifungal drugs, and there was no significant difference in the effective rate between the one-drug therapy (100.00%) and the multi-drug therapy (78.57%).

CONCLUSIONS PM is more prevalent among the population of immunocompromised male with underlying diseases who has less specific clinical symptoms, clinical laboratory test indicators and imaging findings. tNGS is the major technique for rapid diagnosis. The one-drug therapy or multi-drug therapy should be adopted based on the patients′ condition.