The purpose of the study was to investigate the aetiology, risk factors, clinical symptomatology, treatment and outcome of bacterial meningitis. Using retrospective\u00a0surveillance, we identified a total of 103 cases of bacterial meningitis hospitalized at North-Estonian Regional Hospital during 1999\u20132004. The majority of cases (30%) were caused by S. pneumoniae, followed by N. meningitidis (10%). A significant underlying illness or condition was present in 63% of the patients. Twenty-one per cent had concurrent otitis, sinusitis or mastoiditis, 8% had pulmonary pathology. CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) was cultured in 82 patients and was positive in 50 cases.
\nThe most frequently used (in the case of 46 patients), empirical therapy, was a combination penicillin with gentamicin.
\nOverall mortality rate was 27%. The mortality rate was higher for patients with pneumococcal meningitis. The outcome was unfavourable in 24% of the episodes, 49% patients recovered completely. The risk factors for an unfavourable outcome were advanced age, low score on the Glasgow Coma Scale on admission and pneumococcal infection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The purpose of the study was to investigate the aetiology, risk factors, clinical symptomatology, treatment and outcome of bacterial meningitis. Using retrospective\u00a0surveillance, we identified a total of 103 cases of bacterial meningitis hospitalized at North-Estonian Regional Hospital during 1999\u20132004. The majority of cases (30%) were caused by S. pneumoniae, followed by N. meningitidis (10%). A …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1540],"class_list":["post-6078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-research","authors-ande-lindmae-en","authors-silja-kullamaa-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6079,"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6078\/revisions\/6079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}