How do people get infected with meningitis, how is it treated? What is this disease, what are the consequences and preventive measures? We will talk about this in this article.
What is meningitis?
Inflammation of the meninges is called by the general term - meningitis. Meningitis is caused by both viruses and bacteria. It is characteristic that viral meningitis is more common and more common, but has a milder course, unlike bacterial ones. Enteroviruses, herpesvirus and mumps virus are often responsible for viral meningitis.
How do people get infected with viral meningitis? Almost always by airborne or oral-fecal route, that is, by contact with a sick person. It can be hugs and kisses, talking or being in the same room with him. However, it should be understood that you will not become infected with meningitis as such, but with a virus. The disease itself may not come.
How do you get meningitis? Who can pose a danger to a he althy person? Not only people with meningitis are dangerous to others, but also the so-called carriers, that is, people who do not get sick themselves, buthave a potentially dangerous virus or bacterium.
What causes bacterial meningitis? Everything is simple here. Inflammation of the meninges is caused by various bacteria, most often Haemophilus influenzae and cocci. Bacterial meningitis is a dangerous and extremely serious disease. At the first sign, the patient should be taken to the hospital immediately. A delay of even a few hours can cost the patient his life.
Diagnosis
Infectious meningitis in children can develop rapidly and be accompanied by such a severe condition as meningococcal sepsis - septicemia.
Symptoms of meningitis are:
- severe, sometimes unbearable headache;
- oppression of consciousness;
- photophobia;
- increase in body temperature to maximum levels;
- uncontrollable vomiting, etc.
Meningococcal sepsis can be recognized in the first hours of the development of the disease by characteristic rashes in the form of small red spots (from dots to plaques) against a background of pale bluish skin. When pressed with a glass rod, the rash does not disappear.
There are also some characteristic symptoms of meningitis that only a specialist can identify.
Only a doctor can diagnose meningitis. For the correct diagnosis, in addition to special tests to determine pathological reflexes, a number of studies are carried out.
Therapy
How meningitis is contracted is more or less clear. HowWhat is the treatment for this serious disease? Therapy begins even before a clinically confirmed picture of the disease is obtained, since the slightest delay is dangerous. Often, antibiotic therapy begins as early as an ambulance doctor. Penicillin antibiotics, corticosteroid anti-inflammatory drugs, plasma substitutes, body-supporting drugs are used.
Prevention
There is no effective prevention of meningitis as such. Meningitis vaccines are not 100% guaranteed because meningitis pathogens are numerous.
