Meningococcal meningitis is still the commonest neuroinfection in the community in tropics: overview of 62 cases.

ABSTRACT

Within last 17 years we went through all charts of bacterial meningitis within our nationwide survey and among 372 cases we found 62 cases of MM, in 12 cases with meningococcal disease (with shock, petechial effusions or disseminated intravascular coagulation or digital gangrenes). MM was usually observed in young adults without any of investigated risk factors like neoplasia, ENT (ear, nose, throat) focuses, elderly age, sepsis, diabetes, alcoholism, trauma, neonatal VLBW etc. Trauma, diabetes mellitus, alcohol abuse and chronic sinusitis/otitis were significantly less frequently found as a risk factor for MM. Mortality was very low, only 4.8% and was lower than overall mortality in CBM (12.4%, NS). Also the proportion of neurologic sequellae (9.7%) and initial treatment failure (8.1%) were comparable or even lower. This positive outcome results are probably because all N. meningitis strains were susceptible to penicillin, chloramphenicol, cefotaxim, cotrimoxazol or ciprofloxacin. Other reason for low mortality was that most cases received oral antibiotic immediately, even before admission (50 of 62). 95.2% of cases survived, 90.3% without any transient neurological residual symptoms.