CHROMOBLASTOMYCOSIS: Report of Nine Cases from a Single Area in Louisiana

CHROMOBLASTOMYCOSIS is ordinarily regarded as an uncommon type of fungous infection anywhere in the world and as an actually rare infection in the United States. When Carrión¹ published his article on the subject in 1950, he included a critical analysis of all the cases reported up to 1947, of which he accepted 157 as verified. Of these, 43 had occurred in Cuba, 41 in Brazil, 15 in Puerto Rico, 12 in South Africa, and 9 in the United States. The remaining cases occurred in small numbers in various parts of the world with the exception of Asia. The apparent immunity of that continent now no longer exists, a case of the disease having been reported from China in 1951.²

The first case of chromoblastomycosis in the United States occurred in Massachusetts in 1915 and was described by Medlar³ and Lane⁴ in separate publications. Since