Signs of meningitis in adults: do not lose time

Meningitis is the development of inflammatory phenomena in the soft membrane that surrounds the brain. This disease occurs when microbes enter the body, which can overcome the barriers that protect the brain and its membranes. This can occur by contact in the case of a penetrating wound with a dirty object; Hematogenous pathway - as a consequence of blood infection. Microorganisms can also get to a person through the air, then it develops a common cold, sinusitis or otitis, as a result, the infection already falls on the membranes of the brain. Signs of meningitis in adults should be known to all people, as timely treatment in the hospital can prevent many dangerous consequences.

For the development of meningitis, it is important not only to get a microbe that can overcome the blood-brain barrier, but also a general weakening of the body, chronic brain diseases (according to the principle "where it is thin, there it breaks"). So, the same microbe, which got to a supercooled smoker, is more likely to cause pneumonia. But getting to a person who has recently suffered a brain injury, a teenager with increased intracranial pressure since childhood or an elderly person with cerebral atherosclerosis, in a large percentage of cases he will cause meningitis.

Signs of meningitis in adults

The disease has the characteristic symptoms:

• A headache that occurred against a background of a significant increase in temperature. It is intense, spreads over the entire head (less often in the temples or in the forehead), is amplified by changing the position of the body, loud sounds, and sharp switching on of light. It is easier for a patient to lie on his side, having thrown back his head. The more time passes, the greater the pain, the less it gives in to anesthesia;
• photophobia;
• Increased sensitivity of the skin to previously imperceptible stimuli;
• Nausea, there may be vomiting, after which it does not become easier;
• In adults, the appearance of a rash of dark (red, lilac, brown or black) color, which does not itch, does not turn pale when the skin is stretched under it, also often appears on the signs of meningitis, more often begins to appear on the buttocks and legs.

These are the first signs of meningitis in adults. They can appear both suddenly and after previous diseases, such as rubella, chicken pox, measles, mumps. These infections, although considered "childish", are increasingly common in adults, and the older the person, the greater the likelihood of their complicated course.

Symptoms of meningitis in adults can appear after a person has been sick for some time with a sinusitis, a frontitis, an otitis, he had a bad cold. Most often, meningitis occurs after diseases of the ENT organs in those people who, due to congenital or acquired defects of the bones of the skull, suffer from the flow of cerebrospinal fluid from the nose or ear. They have any rhinitis or otitis can (and often ends) with meningitis, and if one does not deal with the plasticity of the damaged bone structure, one of the meningitis can result in disability and even death.

Other signs of meningitis in adults

Sometimes meningitis can manifest pain not in the head, but in the back. It also occurs against the background of high fever, accompanied by weakness, fatigue, decreased appetite, nausea and vomiting.

Symptoms of meningitis also include: confusion, delirium, hallucinations, convulsions with impaired consciousness. These symptoms appear somewhat later than fever and headache.

At present, it is rather difficult to say exactly how meningitis is manifested in adults: atypical forms of the disease that occur with one or two symptoms are increasingly occurring, and they are not particularly pronounced. Sometimes even checking meningeal symptoms is questionable. But if you are worried about a headache on the background of high fever, you do not want to eat and it's very hard to get up because of the increased headache, call an ambulance and do not refuse hospitalization in an infectious hospital.