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To the Editor.
—Therapy for severe infections such as bacteremia, and especially endocarditis, traditionally has been carried out with intravenous antibiotics in the hospital. In recent years, however, attempts to treat some serious infectious diseases, in either an outpatient setting or at home, have been successful medically (achieving high cure rates) and financially (saving patients large amounts of money). All these trials have used parenteral antibiotics. Initial therapy for bacteremia with orally administered antibiotics has not been recommended, nor has it been investigated in large clinical trials. We wish to report a case in which a variety of adverse conditions prevented the patient from receiving traditional therapy, forcing us to use a new antibiotic to treat an unexpected situation in an unorthodox manner.
Report of a Case.
—A 28-year-old man with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)—related Kaposi's sarcoma (AIDS-KS) was receiving a second course of chemotherapy with vincristine sulfate and bleomycin