Links To Dr. Josh Farkas’ Outstanding IBNCC Chapter “Approach to CNS infection”

In this post, I link to Dr. Josh Farkas‘ outstanding Internet Book of Neurocritical Care [Link is to the IBNCC TOC] chapter, Approach to CNS infection, July 3, 2022.

All that follows is from the above resource which is outstanding and can’t be reviewed too often.

This chapter explores some general aspects of neurological infectious diseases, including important historical features and high-risk groups. It also includes a more general discussion of lumbar puncture performance and interpretation.

CONTENTS

• Infectious disease history
• Clinical syndromes
• Blood tests to consider
• Lumbar puncture (LP)
  • Test to obtain & opening pressure
  • Normal CSF & CSF patterns
  • Specific CSF tests:
    • CSF erythrocytes
    • CSF differential cell count
    • CSF protein
    • CSF glucose
    • CSF lactate
    • CSF microarray (e.g., BioFire)
  • Lumbar puncture & coagulopathy
• Specific risk groups
  • Patients status post transplantation
  • Patients with HIV
  • Patients on immunosuppressive medications
• Other related topics
  • DIAM (Drug-induced aseptic meningitis)
• Podcast
• Questions & discussion
• Pitfalls

clinical syndromes

Some types of infection tend to present with characteristic clinical syndromes.  These are explored in other chapters, including:

• Meningitis and encephalitis.
• Limbic encephalitis.
• Basal ganglia involvement.
• Brainstem encephalitis.
• Cerebellitis.
• Anterior horn of spinal cord.