No abstract

Pneumococcal meningitis as an overwhelming post-splenectomy infection (OPSI) has a higher risk of neurological complications and is sometimes life-threatening. In acute pneumococcal meningitis, four days of dexamethasone is widely used for the prevention of neurological complications. Herein, we report a 68-year-old woman with the diagnosis of pneumococcal meningitis as OPSI. With adequate antibiotics and dexamethasone, her symptoms gradually improved. However, after dexamethasone withdrawal, her consciousness got worse and got into a coma. Brain magnetic resonance imaging revealed acute cerebral infarctions in the bilateral middle cerebral artery territory with multiple vascular stenoses and hydrocephalus. Vascular stenoses improved by follow-up, suggesting cerebral vasospasm. There were no suggestive findings of cerebral vasculitis. Follow-up cerebrospinal fluid analysis showed remained pleocytosis with no bacteria, which could not suggest meningitis recurrence. Since steroid therapy was rapidly withdrawn, we diagnosed that the cerebral vasospasm was due to the steroid rebound phenomenon. The steroid rebound phenomenon due to the excessive immune response to bacterial microstructures has been reported in pneumococcal meningitis. Especially, the present case was asplenia and the usual dexamethasone use would not adequately suppress the immune response to bacterial microstructures. Since pneumococcal meningitis as OPSI has a higher risk of neurological complications, clinicians should consider longer and more cautious steroid tapering.

Background and Purpose: Post stroke dysphagia (PSD) is a common complication after stroke. The earlier prediction of PSD is essential for patient stratification for intensive rehabilitation, but there was no scoring system for predicting PSD. We aimed to develop the PSD prediction score. Methods: We examined consecutive patients with acute ischemic stroke between 2018-2020. Patients with in-hospital-death were excluded. Dysphagia state was assessed using food oral intake scale (FOIS) score at hospital discharge. PSD was defined as FOIS 1-3, which represent tube-dependent nutrition. For the assessment of reproducibility of PSD score, patients were divided into derivation and validation cohort. Using the derivation cohort, PSD score was developed from associated factors to discriminate PSD by logistic regression analysis. Discriminative performance was analyzed by receiver operating curve (ROC) analysis. Reproducibility of PSD score was validated using the validation cohort. Results: Among 795 patients (median 77 years; male, 57%), 556 (70%) patients were assigned as derivation cohort and 239 (30%) patients were assigned as validation cohort. In the derivation cohort, older age (≥85 years), low BMI (≦18.5 kg/m 2 for aged <70 years and ≦ 20 kg/m 2 for aged ≥70 years), high NIHSS score (≥16), and low serum albumin (≦3.0 mg/dl) were associated with PSD (Table). PSD score were ranged from 0 to 6 from these factors (Table). Area under the curve (AUC) of PSD score for PSD was 0.83 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.78-0.88) with an appropriate cut-off value of 2 (sensitivity, 69%; specificity, 88%). In the validation cohort, the AUC of PSD score for PSD was 0.78 (95% CI 0.70-0.86), which was not significantly different in the AUC of the derivation cohort (AUC; 0.83 vs 0.78, p=0.30). Conclusions: In acute ischemic stroke population, the discriminative performance of PSD score had acceptable for diagnosing PSD.