ABSTRACT
Background: The British Medical Research Council (BMRC) staging has been extensively used to evaluate the disease severity and establish the approximate prognosis of tuberculous meningitis. Aims: This study aimed at analyzing the predictive accuracy for mortality and neurological sequelae of a set of clinical features, laboratory tests and imaging. Methods: We compared the British Medical Research Council (BMRC) staging with a new scoring proposal to predict the prognosis of patients with Central Nervous System Tuberculosis. Data from Ecuador was collected. A score was built using a Spiegelhalter and Knill-Jones method and compared with BMRC staging with a ROC curve. Results: A total of 213/310 patients (68.7%) were in BMRC stage II or III. Fifty-seven patients died (18.3%) and 101 (32.5%) survived with sequelae. The associated predictors were consciousness impairment (p= 0.010), motor deficit (p = 0.003), cisternal effacement (p=0.006) and infarcts (p=0.015). The new score based on these predictors yielded a larger area under the curve of 0.76 (95% CI: 0.70-0.82), but not significantly different from the BMRC (0.72: 95% CI: 0.65-0.77). Conclusions: This modern score is easy to apply and could be a sound predictor of poor prognosis. However, the availability of modern tests did not improve the ability to predict a bad outcome.
Subject(s)
Adult , Diagnostic Imaging/methods , Disease Progression , Ecuador/epidemiology , Female , Humans , Incidence , Male , Mycobacterium tuberculosis/isolation & purification , Prognosis , ROC Curve , Retrospective Studies , Severity of Illness Index , Survival Rate/trends , Tuberculosis, Meningeal/diagnosis , Tuberculosis, Meningeal/epidemiology , Tuberculosis, Meningeal/epidemiology , Tuberculosis, Meningeal/microbiologyABSTRACT
Background: The British Medical Research Council (BMRC) staging has been extensively used to evaluate the disease severity and establish the approximate prognosis of tuberculous meningitis. Aims: This study aimed at analyzing the predictive accuracy for mortality and neurological sequelae of a set of clinical features, laboratory tests and imaging. Methods: We compared the British Medical Research Council (BMRC) staging with a new scoring proposal to predict the prognosis of patients with Central Nervous System Tuberculosis. Data from Ecuador was collected. A score was built using a Spiegelhalter and Knill-Jones method and compared with BMRC staging with a ROC curve. Results: A total of 213/310 patients (68.7%) were in BMRC stage II or III. Fifty-seven patients died (18.3%) and 101 (32.5%) survived with sequelae. The associated predictors were consciousness impairment (p= 0.010), motor deficit (p = 0.003), cisternal effacement (p=0.006) and infarcts (p=0.015). The new score based on these predictors yielded a larger area under the curve of 0.76 (95% CI: 0.70-0.82), but not significantly different from the BMRC (0.72: 95% CI: 0.65-0.77). Conclusions: This modern score is easy to apply and could be a sound predictor of poor prognosis. However, the availability of modern tests did not improve the ability to predict a bad outcome.