It can be quite contagious.
Fungal meningitis generally occurs in patients who are defense compromised. The symptoms are similar to viral and bacterial meningitis. As with various opportunistic fungal infections of immune jeopardized patients, it could be quite critical, and treatment is difficult or impossible.
Diagnosis and Treatment
The greatest question to get physicians treating patients with suspected meningitis is: “is it viral or can it be bacterial? ” Rapid checks for Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcus) and Haemophilus influenzae Type B have made it relatively easy to determine within a short while of time whether these are the causative providers. These testing are on CSF, however , that can be difficult and painful to extract from the patient. Since they are antibody tests, there can be a delay from onset of illness to creation of antibodies; therefore , there could be a false bad early in the course of the disease.
Another indication is definitely the presence of white bloodstream cells in CSF. As the presence of white cellular material is a sign of a CSF infection, such as meningitis, a great absence will not rule out the condition.
Treatment protocols vary with respect to the type of meningitis. Viral meningitis treatment is usually palliative just – pain alleviation and pickup bed rest. Sometimes where the patient is particularly unwell, there may be a few antiviral drugs given, whilst they are usually not successful unless given early throughout the disease.
Apart from rapid antibody tests, there are no techniques which allow for rapid bacterial CSF solitude and differentiation. In some cases, the low number of CFU’s in the CSF requires multiplication through PCR or rampacked media utilized for septicemia testing. An seclusion step can then be required, and after 24-48 hours one can take one or more CFU’s and operate an antimicrobial susceptibility evaluation.
If the doctor diagnoses bacterial meningitis, the treatment is generally a broad-spectrum cephalosporin, generally sent through 4 for at least 10 days (Bashir). On the other hand, one can prescribe Vancomycin together with a carbapenem, because the resistance to penicillin is fairly high in america. If the patients are small or old, 1 might put in a -cillin medicine, such as ampicillin, to counter a possible infection by Listeria monocytogenes.
Summary
Bacterial meningitis is a serious infection which usually requires rapid treatment inside the presence of relatively very little information. The treatments may cause a number of unwanted effects, and need several times of hospitalization to administer IV prescription drugs. For these reasons, the physician confronted by a potential of bacterial meningitis must make knowledgeable guesses, and hope that he/she would not subject a lot of patients needlessly to large antibiotic remedy while not absent any true cases of bacterial meningitis.
Bibliography
Bashir, HE, Laundy, M and Booy, R. “Diagnosis and treatment of bacterial meningitis. ” Archives of Disease in Childhood (2003): 615-620.
Mayhall CG, Archer NH, Lamb VA, Spadora AC, Baggett JW, Ward JD, Narayan RK. “Ventriculostomy-related infections. A prospective epidemiologic study. inches NEJM (1984): 553-559.
Radetsky, M. “Duration of symptoms and end result in microbe meningitis: a great analysis of causation as well as the implications of any delay in diagnosis. inch Pediatr Invade Dis J (1992): 698-701.
Schuchat, a, Robinson, K, Wenger, JD, Harrison, LH, Farley, M, Reingold, APPROACH, Lefkowitz, M and Perkins, BA. “Bacterial Meningitis in