0 a serious infectious disease that causes the tissues around the brain and spinal cord to swell
1 a swelling of the outer membrane (= thin layer of tissue) of the brain caused by an infection
We developed a diagnostic decision rule for the indication of a lumbar puncture and empirical treatment for bacterial meningitis (9;10).
One hundred and eleven confirmed cases of bacterial meningitis were identified.
A total of 145 cases were classified as septicaemia alone (53 %), 71 as meningitis alone (26 %) and 50 cases had both septicaemia and meningitis (18 %).
In each of these hospitals, lumbar punctures are routinely performed on patients with suspected meningitis.
A total of 14 horses with records of meningitis, encephalitis and/or brain hemorrhage of undetermined aetiology were identified within the same time period.
The rate of meningitis in the infected infants was 30 % while all the recently infected adults were asymptomatic.
Fourteen patients with aseptic meningitis were re-hospitalized but all patients recovered fully without any neurological sequellae.
One of the previous publications (7), however, studied children with meningitis only.
