4 necessary tests to diagnose meningitis

Signs of meningitis in teenagers

When an infection penetrates the brain, symptoms increase quickly, the inflammatory process has rapid development and serious consequences. Meningitis in adolescents can cause complete loss of vision or hearing, provoke epilepsy and cause lifelong disability. If alarming symptoms appear, you should urgently call a doctor.

Signs of meningitis occur suddenly:

very high body temperature;
unexpected loss of strength, general weakness;
pain syndrome of muscles and joints;
apathy and lack of appetite.

Meningitis differs from other diseases of viral etiology by a sudden sudden increase in temperature, this is the reason for urgent treatment to the hospital.

It is easier to diagnose the onset of meningitis in adolescents than in infants, but the disease can only be accurately determined in a clinical setting. The latent period of the disease is short; 2-5 days after the infection enters, an active inflammatory process begins, so there is no time to waste, the patient must be treated urgently.

Treatment

There are many diseases whose first symptoms are very similar to meningitis. In any case, at the first signs, urgent hospitalization of the patient is necessary. Self-treatment can lead to negative consequences, some of which can be irreversible or fatal. This disease requires emergency care, the promptness of which gives greater confidence in a complete recovery.

There are several areas of treatment:

Meningitis cannot be fully diagnosed without taking antibiotics. In more than 20% of cases, it is impossible to determine the type of pathogen and its nature, so antibiotic treatment is selected taking into account the maximum coverage of the spectrum of all possible pathogens. The course of antibiotics should be at least a week, at the discretion of the attending physician. The duration of the inflammatory process in the body is individual for everyone, so the course is prescribed based on the characteristics of the patient. In general, drug therapy begins to act instantly. The following antibiotics are used as effective drugs for meningitis: Penicillin and Cephalosporin. In severe cases of the disease, they resort to the help of Vancomycin and Carbapenems.

Diuretics are used to relieve swelling. Along with them, liquid is introduced inside. The most common are Diacarb and Lasix.
For detoxification, colloidal and crystalloid solutions are used, infused intravenously.
If necessary, the patient continues treatment at home under the supervision of a doctor. The patient can take sick leave for up to six months.

First symptoms

Symptoms of meningitis in adolescents have a characteristic picture:

sudden appearance of purulent rhinitis;
elevated temperature 39-400C;
nausea accompanied by vomiting;
weakness, lack of appetite;
herpetic type rashes;
headaches, severe, uncontrollable;
tension and pain in the muscles of the occipital part of the neck;
constant desire to sleep.

Meningitis requires immediate treatment in a hospital setting.
A severe form of the disease in a teenager may be accompanied by convulsions and fainting. The inflammatory process can affect and damage the optic nerve, which will cause strabismus and partial or complete loss of vision. Vomiting occurs at the slightest movement, the skin becomes pale, sensitivity to touch increases, and blood pressure may decrease significantly.

Increased intracranial pressure causes headaches so severe that the child may lose consciousness or become delirious. This condition requires immediate treatment in a hospital setting, otherwise the patient may die. The earlier treatment is started, the greater the chance of avoiding serious complications; boys who have had meningitis in adolescence may remain infertile forever and not develop as men. When the first symptoms of meningitis appear in adolescents, you should immediately call a doctor.

How to avoid getting meningitis: precautions

Seven cases of serous meningitis in children have been registered in the capital. Parents are sounding the alarm and fear the outbreak of an epidemic. Why meningitis is dangerous and how to avoid the disease - in the material M24.ru.

Meningitis is an inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord. In this disease, brain cells are not damaged, and the foci of inflammation are located outside - on the membranes of the brain matter. However, meningitis is perhaps even more dangerous than encephalitis - the mortality rate for this disease is very high, and in addition, children most often suffer from meningitis during epidemic outbreaks.

Types of meningitis and its danger

Despite the common name “meningitis,” several completely different types of disease are hidden under it. Meningitis can be purulent, serous and tuberculous.

The first form includes meningitis, as a result of which pus forms on the membranes of the brain, and with serous meningitis, the membranes of the brain are impregnated with serous-fibrinous (protein) exudate. As for tuberculous meningitis, it occurs in patients with tuberculosis against the background of an underlying disease. If the latter type of meningitis is not treated, it always leads to the death of the patient.

Photo: ITAR-TASS

In general, purulent meningitis is more dangerous than serous meningitis, develops faster and leads to more severe consequences if the disease is not diagnosed in a timely manner.

Meningitis may not be an independent disease, but may develop as a complication of some other disease. This happens especially often with pneumonia, otitis, frontal sinuses and inflammation of the paranasal sinuses. Therefore, you should take even a common runny nose seriously and not leave it untreated - this will not lead to anything good.

Children can get meningitis during epidemic outbreaks of the disease, which most often occur in the spring and early summer. Moreover, this applies to both purulent and serous meningitis.

The disease (with the exception of the tuberculosis form) develops acutely: the temperature rises to 40-41 degrees within a few hours, the patient suffers from vomiting, and the most important symptom of meningitis is headache. With meningitis it is unbearable. Often a rash appears on the patient’s skin, and sometimes convulsions develop.

At the first suspicion of meningitis, you should immediately call an ambulance: there is a high risk of death for the patient.

Photo: ITAR-TASS

How to distinguish meningitis from other diseases

Meningitis is also insidious in that it is often confused with other diseases, usually less severe. A particularly common mistake parents make is to confuse meningitis with the flu. It really does resemble the flu when it is severe, but there are differences.

Firstly, vomiting during meningitis is not associated with food intake, but is the body’s reaction to increased intracranial pressure (as a result of inflammation of the meninges). Secondly, headaches of the same severity as with meningitis do not happen with the flu.

A patient with meningitis, as a rule, lies in a special position on his back: his legs are pulled up to his stomach and his head is thrown back. This is due to numbness of the occipital muscles - the patient simply cannot tilt his head to his chest.

It is useless to give a child with meningitis the antipyretics so beloved by parents - they will not lead to any positive effect. There are also no traditional medicines for this disease; the only way is to immediately call doctors. Meningitis is treated with antibiotics and a spinal tap in a hospital setting.

With meningitis, minutes count—untimely detected meningitis can lead to complications (blindness, deafness, loss of coordination, epilepsy) or death. Therefore, you cannot delay contacting doctors even for a minute.

Photo: ITAR-TASS

How to protect yourself from meningitis

In the case of a disease such as meningitis, there is no universal remedy that would help get rid of all fears. But there are a number of recommendations that reduce the risk of disease to a minimum.

Firstly, children should go for walks more often, and the premises should be ventilated more often. The causative agent of the disease is very sensitive to low temperatures and dies quickly. Secondly, you should not take children to places with excessive crowds of people - one of them may be a carrier of meningitis (and there are quite a lot of such people - many do not develop meningitis even after the pathogen enters the body).

Reasons for the development of the disease

The etiology of meningitis is infectious in nature; meningococci can often be infected by airborne droplets; adolescents are primarily at risk due to high contact. Other factors can provoke the development of meningitis:

bacterial infection - pneumococci, streptococci, meningococci, hemophilus influenzae;
furunculosis of the face and neck;
ENT – diseases of an infectious nature;
working in cold conditions or constant hypothermia;
poor nutrition, deficiency of vitamins and microelements;
reduced immunity.

The first signs of meningitis appear a few days after infection.
Rare factors that cause meningitis in adolescents can be tuberculosis, fungal infection or helminthic infestation.

Characteristics of the pathology

There are primary and secondary forms. In the first case, the pathogens are localized and provoke the appearance of a focus of inflammation in the nervous tissue. In the second, before the development of meningitis, there were foci of infectious lesions localized in different organs in the body. According to the nature of the course, they are classified as fulminant (clinical symptoms appear within 24 hours), acute (rapidly, clearly progressive), chronic (pathological processes last longer than 4 weeks).

The chronic form correlates with pathologies such as Lyme disease, tuberculosis, autoimmune diseases with connective tissue damage, syphilis, candidiasis, and toxoplasmosis. In pathogenesis, the hematogenous (through the bloodstream) or contact (direct) route of infection plays a decisive role. Viral forms are most often provoked by mumps, Coxsackie, and ECHO viruses. Meningococci, pneumococci, and Haemophilus influenzae are more often involved in pathogenetic processes in bacterial forms.

Diagnostics

The doctor can make a preliminary diagnosis based on the clinical picture and general condition of the patient, but to confirm the diagnosis there are signs that appear only with meningitis:

It is necessary to bend the child’s leg at the knee and try to pull it towards the stomach. If there is tension in the hamstring muscles and the inability to bend the leg, this confirms the development of meningitis according to Kernig's symptom.
According to Brudzinski's symptom, when one leg bends at the knee and hip joints at the same time, the second leg bends at the reflex level.

Diagnostic measures include laboratory tests of blood and urine, but 100% confirmation of meningitis is provided by puncture of the cerebrospinal fluid. This analysis determines the nature of the infection; viral and bacterial meningitis have different treatments. The big advantage of the puncture is that its collection helps reduce intracranial pressure, thereby significantly facilitating the patient’s condition.

CSF analysis

If meningitis of any etiology is suspected, the doctor will first prescribe a cerebrospinal fluid analysis (or a study of cerebrospinal fluid or cerebrospinal fluid) to the patient.

CSF is usually obtained by lumbar puncture. The first drops obtained are removed, the subsequent material is collected in at least 2 test tubes for general clinical and chemical research.

Microbiological and microchemical examination of cerebrospinal fluid is an important task, since the accuracy of the diagnosis and the subsequent prescription of treatment for the patient depends on the conclusion of the laboratory study.

general description

Meningitis is an inflammation of the meninges.
The causative agents of meningitis are various pathogenic microorganisms. Most often, viruses and bacteria play this role, less often protozoa (they cause the development of protozoal meningitis) and fungi. The disease occurs throughout the world, but is most common in third world countries with low living standards. Residents of these countries are diagnosed with meningitis approximately 35 times more often than residents of European countries and the United States.

Clinically, the disease manifests itself as headaches, uncontrollable vomiting, atrophy of the neck muscles, and skin rashes. To establish an accurate diagnosis and find out the reasons for the development of pathology, the patient undergoes a lumbar function with subsequent study of the taken biomaterial. Treatment of the disease is complex, medicinal.

Classification of meningitis

Depending on the type of inflammation, the following forms of meningitis are distinguished:

purulent meningitis - severe, caused by pathogenic bacteria, this form of the disease is characterized by the formation of pus;
serous meningitis - has a viral origin, no pus is formed, this form of the disease is less severe than purulent meningitis.

According to etiology there are:

bacterial meningitis - can be caused by Escherichia coli, streptococci, staphylococci, meningococci (meningococcal meningitis);
fungal - caused by fungi from the genus Candida, as well as cryptococci;
viral meningitis - its causes are a virus that causes the development of mumps in children, herpes;
meningitis, which occurs when protozoa enter the patient’s body;
mixed - meningitis occurs under the influence of several pathogens at once.

Based on their origin, the following types of meningitis are distinguished:

primary meningitis - the primary focus of infection occurs in the membranes of the brain;
secondary meningitis - occurs as a complication of certain somatic diseases.

Based on the speed of meningitis, the following forms of the disease are distinguished:

fulminant - develops very quickly, has an unfavorable prognosis, the patient’s death can occur within 1-2 days after the appearance of the first symptoms;
acute - the disease develops quickly and has characteristic clinical signs;
chronic - the development of the pathological process is slow, the clinical picture is blurred, which makes timely diagnosis difficult.

What is the disease and what are the causes of its occurrence?

So, the presented pathology is a viral or bacterial inflammatory lesion of the membranes surrounding the brain, which can develop in people with weakened immune systems.

All forms of the disease, except viral, are quite severe and can lead to serious consequences (impaired brain function, coma, loss of vision or hearing, death).

Moreover, the highest risk of their occurrence is observed in older people.

Study the detailed characteristics of the disease and types of meningitis.

As for the reasons for the development of the disease in a teenager or adult, they can be as follows:

Allergic reaction to medications.
Fungal, parasitic or viral damage to the brain.
A neoplasm that is malignant or benign in nature.
Chemical poisoning.
Anemia.
Diabetes.
Surgery in the brain, neck or head.
ENT infections.
Shunting caused by the development of hydrocephalus.
The use of medications that suppress the immune system.
Unfavorable living conditions.

Watch the video in which an infectious disease doctor talks in detail about the disease:

These reasons can be considered the most common. If a person has a strong immune barrier, then it will not allow inflammation to develop. However, it is necessary to know the reasons that provoke the disease. Only in this case can you provide effective preventive measures not only for yourself, but also for your loved ones.

4.Prevention of disease

The best way to prevent meningitis in children is to comply with the schedules of preventive vaccinations recommended by doctors - against measles, chickenpox, Haemophilus influenzae and pneumococcal infections. In addition, there is a meningococcal vaccine

– vaccination against bacterial meningitis. The need for it should be discussed with your doctor. This vaccination is usually recommended for:

Teenagers aged 11-12 years. At the age of 16, revaccination is carried out;
Young people aged 21 years who have not received recommended vaccinations;
For those planning to travel to countries with frequent outbreaks of meningitis. One of the dangerous regions is sub-Saharan Africa;
People whose spleen has been removed;
HIV-infected people.

In some cases, vaccination is recommended every five years.

Consequences of meningitis

Meningitis is a severe disease that can cause the following complications:

DIC syndrome, toxic shock - develop due to a large amount of toxins in the patient’s blood, lead to extensive bleeding of internal organs, disruption of their function, up to the death of the patient, clinically these conditions are manifested by a sharp drop in temperature, shortness of breath, the patient is agitated, he develops photophobia and sound sensitivity;
deafness - develops as a result of irreversible damage to the auditory nerve by toxins;
decreased intellectual ability is a fairly common complication of meningitis, which is associated with damage to the meninges and brain matter by toxins and pus;
cerebral edema - most often occurs on the second day of illness, the patient’s blood pressure drops sharply and then increases, he loses consciousness, and severe shortness of breath appears;
Myocardial infarction - most often this complication occurs in older people.

Depending on the form of meningitis, its course, the timeliness of treatment, and the occurrence of complications, there may be several outcomes:

in the absence of treatment, death occurs in 100% of cases;
If the correct treatment of meningitis is started in a timely manner, the prognosis is favorable - the patient recovers completely;
A fairly common outcome of meningitis is various residual effects and complications such as the development of deafness, blindness, epilepsy, and decreased intelligence.