MENINGITIS: ORTHODOX TREATMENT
There is only one place for a person with suspected meningitis, and that is the hospital, and very quickly, too. After a quick examination, the hospital doctor will perform a lumbar puncture, in which a needle is put in the small of the back so that it reaches the fluid surrounding the spinal cord. This is the safest place to tap cerebro-spinal fluid (CSF) without damaging the spinal nerves.
The doctor will then check if the CSF is cloudy. If it is, the patient, has meningitis, probably bacterial. If it is clear, the patient may still have meningitis (more likely viral in this case). Analysis of the CSF in the lab, in particular culturing it for bacteria, will not only tell the doctor what type of infection the patient has, but also show the antibiotics to which the bacteria is sensitive.
The treatment for bacterial meningitis is antibiotics. Often a cocktail of several antibiotics is used, in case the bacteria are resistant to one of them. Often these antibiotics are initially given by injection, sometimes into muscle, sometimes into a drip which is inserted directly into a vein, which takes them directly into the bloodstream. In some cases, the doctor will inject antibiotics into the spine at the time of the lumbar puncture, so that the antibiotics go directly into the spinal fluid surrounding the infected meninges.
From then on it is a matter of waiting and hoping. Despite the fact that in lab tests the bacteria causing meningitis are often sensitive to antibiotics, in the patient the same antibiotics do not necessarily work as quickly nor as effectively as we would like. Even with full doses of antibiotics it is still quite possible for the patient to die, or be brain damaged, by the infection. One reason for this is that some types of bacteria release toxins, so that even if the bacteria have been killed the toxins are still in the system, doing damage and causing toxic shock.
After the initial infection is over, rest and recuperation are the order of the day, and it may be many weeks before the patient is fit enough to resume their usual duties.
What about viral meningitis? Here is a different problem. While bacterial meningitis is sensitive to antibiotics, viral meningitis isn’t. There are one or two anti-viral agents that can sometimes be used, but by and large, viral meningitis has to resolve of its own accord rather than by anything the doctor can do. After a time the immune system of the body works out how to respond to the invading viruses, and starts destroying them. Thankfully, viral meningitis doesn’t do anything like the same amount of damage as bacterial meningitis, though it can still be lethal.
*27\20\2*
Leave a reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.