Peculiarities of Clinical Manifestations of CNS Infections in Children

Abstract

At present, the neuroinfections in children are a socially significant problem, as they can lead to disability and death.Aim. To reveal the patterns of clinical manifestations of neuroinfections in the children’s central nervous system.Materials and methods. We investigated 91 cases of neuroinfections in children. The children underwent treatment in the Regional Infectious Diseases Hospital (Chita) between 2007 and 2014. Among 91 cases, 32 patients had viral neuroinfections and 59 had bacterial infections.Results. The young boys have bacterial neuroinfections more often. Headaches were found in 73.6 % of children; more often in children with viral neuroinfections – in 87.5 %, and less frequent in children with bacterial neuroinfections – in 66.1 %, p ˂ 0.01 The disease often starts with fever and vomiting. The neck stiffness and the Kernig symptom were often found in patients with bacterial neuroinfections persisting for 5 ± 1.7 days and 4 ± 1.9 days correspondingly, in children with viral neuroinfections – for 3 ± 1.4 and 3 ± 1.2 days, p ˂ 0.05. Pneumococcal etiology of the disease underlies the most severe and protracted cases in the course of neuroinfections. Pneumococcus causes the most severe and protracted diseases of the nervous system. Most often the bacterial neuroinfections cause cerebral edema and septic shock.Conclusions. Neuroinfections have typical clinical signs that need to be properly interpreted and evaluated by physicians to reduce adverse outcomes.