Meningitis is a complex infectious disease that causes damage to the membranes of the brain and spinal cord. This pathology ranks tenth among all the infectious diseases that occur that affect the nervous system.
If meningitis is not treated, this can cause significant complications and consequences, up to a lethal outcome.
Diagnosis is an important step towards the recovery of
Special attention should be paid to symptoms specific to meningitis. All these reflex syndromes carry the names of the "forefathers" of modern neurology who discovered and described them many years ago: Kernig, Montonezi, Flautau, Lesage, and others.
The symptom of suspension is a specific diagnosis of meningitis only in infants( up to 2 years).In children of this age, it is very difficult to detect the presence of meningitis, and Lesage's test was a real discovery in pediatric neurology of that time.
How the
test is performed The Lesage symptom, or suspension, allows you to determine if there is meningitis in the infant. This research is performed as follows:
- the doctor takes the infant in front of the axillary fovea( armpits) - with both hands;
- from the back of the neck should be held with index fingers;
- in this fixed position of the examined infants is raised.
If the baby involuntarily pulls the lower extremities to the tummy, bending them in the hip and knee joints, and in this condition holds them for a long time, this positive Lesage syndrome. That is, it indicates the presence of meningitis in the child. In a healthy baby, the legs move freely and flex.
Also for babies are tested symptoms of Treader, Fanconi, Meitus, but they are more complex and less informative.
Other meningeal signs of
The following important symptoms of meningitis are common to adults and children:
- Kernig's syndrome .It is that the subject can not unbend his leg in the knee, if it is already bent in the hip joint.
- Reflex Flatau .With a sharp passive( the doctor's hand) bending the neck in the patient, the pupils expand. Symptom of Herman .When the doctor presses the patient's head to the chest, the patient has an extension of the big toes.
- Syndrome of Mondonezi .When pressing on eyeballs through closed eyelids, the patient being examined feels pain, and this is a sign of meningitis.
- The Matceven Symptom - a specific "cracked pot sound" is heard when examining the skull with a finger or a percussion hammer.
All these symptoms and specific reflexes are included in the meningeal symptom complex.
