Pecularities of meningitis in children

SUMMARY Agnė Sologubienė Pecularities of meningitis in children Objective. Our aim was to evaluate and compare epidemiological, clinical and diagnostic features of meningitis in children who were treated in Kaunas clinical hospital. Tasks. In this study we wanted to evaluate epidemiological features of meningitis and to compare clinical symptoms and laboratory findings of viral and bacterial meningitis in children. Materials and methods. A retrospective analysis of 322 cases of patients with meningitis hospitalised in Kaunas Clinical Hospital. Results and conclusions. Higher morbidity of viral meningitis in 2013. Most of the cases of viral meningitis was during July-October. Average age of the patients was 9,61 ± 4,25 years. There was found a week relationship: the higher the age of children, the less bacterial meningitis was diagnosed. We found direct link between the cause of meningitis and temperature: bacterial meningitis was diagnosed more often when the temperature was higher. The provocative test was statistically more frequent among the patients with viral meningitis. At least one of the meningeal symptoms was statistically more frequent among the patients with viral meningitis. Stasis of eye fundus was statistically more frequent among the patients with bacterial meningitis. We found strong direct link between the etiology of meningitis and blood sample ratios: the higher chance of bacterial meningitis is when the leukocytosis and CRP are higher. There was found a strong link between the etiology of meningitis and the amount of leucocytes, proteins in the cerebrospinal fluid (the chance of bacterial meningitis is higher when the amount of leucocytes and proteins is higher), but not the differentiation of leucocytes. We found a strong inverse relationship between the glucose proportion (glucose in CSF/glucose in blood) and bacterial meningitis: the chance of bacterial meningitis is higher when the glucose proportion is lower