%0 Journal Article
%T Clinical features, acute complications, and outcome of Salmonella meningitis in children under one year of age in Taiwan
%A Hung-Ming Wu
%A Wan-Yu Huang
%A Meng-Luen Lee
%A Albert D Yang
%A Ko-Ping Chaou
%A Lin-Yu Hsieh
%J BMC Infectious Diseases
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1471-2334-11-30
%X The records of patients with spontaneous Salmonella meningitis from 1982 to 1994 were retrospectively reviewed. The long-term outcome was prospectively determined for survivors at school age by the developmental milestones reported by their parents and detailed neurological evaluation along with intelligence, hearing, visual, speech and language assessments.Of the twenty-four patients, seizures were noted in fifteen (63%) before admission and thirteen (54%) during hospitalization. Acute complications mainly included hydrocephalus (50%), subdural collection (42%), cerebral infarction (33%), ventriculitis (25%), empyema (13%), intracranial abscess (8%), and cranial nerve palsy (8%). Three patients (13%) died during the acute phase of Salmonella meningitis. The twenty-one survivors, on whom we followed up at school age, have sequelae consisting of language disorder (52%), motor disability (48%), intelligence quotient < 80 (43%), epilepsy (33%), sensorineural hearing loss (17%), visual deficits (10%), abducens nerve palsy (5%), microcephaly (5%), and hydrocephalus (5%). Overall, good outcome was noted in six (28.6%) of twenty-one survivors, mild sequelae in three (14.2%), moderate in six (28.6%), and severe in six (28.6%).Salmonella meningitis in neonates and infants had a wide spectrum of morbidity and acute complications, leading to a complicated hospital course and subsequently a high prevalence of permanent adverse outcome. Thus, early recognition of acute complications of Salmonella meningitis and a follow-up plan for early developmental assessment of survivors are vital.Salmonella strains are an important pathogen of childhood bacterial meningitis in many developing countries, accounting for 5-13% of acute bacterial meningitis in young children in the 1980s-2000s [1-4]. In developed countries, Salmonella meningitis is a rare form (1% or less) of acute bacterial meningitis, but such infections are serious and thus still a threat to children below the age of two [5,
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/11/30