A Five Years Retrospective Study on Etiology and Clinical Analysis of Meningitis in St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College Pediatric Ward from 2012-2016

ABSTRACT

Meningitis is the sever CNS pyogenicinfections which primarily affectsinfants and children. Ethiopia isone of the countries where meningitis isendemic and frequentepisodes of meningococcal epidemics are very common in the dry season (December to June). The main purpose of thisstudy was toidentify determinantsand clinical analysis of meningitis in pediatrics ward admitted to St.Paul’s hospital millennium medical college pediatrics wards from2012-2016. retrospective study on etiology and clinical analysis of meningitis was conducted at the pediatric unit. The study population was all pediatric patients admitted with meningitis that were presented in ward during the study period. Those fulfilling the mentioned inclusion criteria wereincluded. The data were collected using a structured format in September /2016. From the study population 95 cases fulfilled the inclusion criteriaand 64 & 31 of them were males and females, respectivelymaking a male to female ratio of 21. The most significant seasonalvariation was observed for N. meningitidishaving highincidence in the 2ndquarter (April to June). Inthe dry season 18 cases were diagnosed using the culture results. Culturefindings alsorevealed that S.pneumonia was one of the commonest causes of bacterialmeningitis. Themost common symptom was fever with high grade fever (>38oC) recorded in 84(88.4%) of cases. Most (65.5 %). of clients were recovered from meningitis at the end of the treatmentwhere as death was the second outcome with 17(20.2 %) cases ended up with death. Neurological or other complications were seen in 9(10.7 %) cases.