Neonatal Meningoencephalitis

Abstract

We carried out a study to patients whose age was less than 28 days old and who had been hospitalized in The Intensive Care Unit at “Eliseo Noel Caamaño” Pediatric Hospital. The study lasted from january 1985 to december 2001, excluding from it those patients with traumatic lumbar puncture. The simple was conformed of 44 new born children of these children, 93.1% showed a birth weight upper than 2500 gramos . Two of them were born at 36 weeks gestational age and another one had retarded intrauterine growth (C I U R). Also, 93.1% of the simple included new born children whose ages were between 1 to 27 days old. The etiologic diagnosis was confirmed in 9 children (20.4%), 8 due to bacterial etiology and one due to cytomegalovirus. Just two patients with bacterial meningoencephalitis showed pleocytosis greater than 1000/mm 3 and cerebrospind fluid protein over 120mg/dls. Fifty per cent of patients with bacterial meningoencephalitis demostrated a leucocyte count in peripheric plate, less than 5000/m 3 . Eleven children had convulsions when they were admitted to the hospital, 6 of them had cerebral palsy as sequela and three died. There were 4 deaths in our study, three due to bacterial infections and one due to cytomegalovirus.