Cerebrospinal Meningitis, Its Etiology, Diagnosis, Prognosis and Treatment

Abstract

Cerebrospinal meningitis is an infectious disease of the pia mater and arachnoid membranes of the brain and spinal cord. The confused basis of the classification of diseases, which is a legacy from former times, has led to considerable obscurity in the nomenclature used in describing these infections. In the past diseases have been successively classified on bases which have been changed from time to time as our knowledge has increased. We have had classifications based on symptomatology, on vague, unsupported and false notions as to etiology, on morbid anatomic lesion, and on etiology. These former classifications are still to be traced in descriptive terminology, from the fact that we are prone to cling to the names after the ideas which they represent have been superseded by more exact knowledge. Thus the term cerebrospinal meningitis dates from that era in which diseases were classified mainly on the basis of their anatomic lesions, and might falsely convey the idea that it repre¬

The utility of the polymerase chain reaction assay for aetiologic definition of unspecified bacterial meningitis cases

“…This bacterium is now a rare human pathogen in regions where the Hib conjugate vaccine was introduced in childhood immunization programs (Finn 2004). Reports published in the first decades of the XX century emphasized the strong association of S. pneumoniae meningitis with lobar pneumonia (Dunn 1911). However, currently it occurs most often as a complication of suppurative paracranial infections, of systemic sepsis, of skull trauma with CSF leak, or secondary to conditions with defective clearance of pneumococcal bacteremia or antibody formation (Greenwood 2000).…”