Meningitis is the development of inflammation 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 happen by contact if a penetrating wound with a dirty object has occurred; hematogenous route - as a result of blood poisoning. Microorganisms can also get to a person through the air, then he develops a runny nose, sinusitis or otitis media, as a result, the infection already enters the brain membrane. Signs of adult meningitis should be known to all people, since timely admission to the hospital can prevent many dangerous consequences.
For the development of meningitis, not only the penetration of a microbe capable of overcoming the blood-brain barrier, but also the general weakening of the body, chronic brain diseases (according to the principle “where it is thin, it breaks”) is important. So, one and the same microbe that has got to a chilled smoker is more likely to cause pneumonia. But once a person who has suffered a brain injury not so long ago, 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 Adult Meningitis
The disease has characteristic symptoms:
- headache arising from a significant increase in temperature. It is intense, spreads all over the head (less often - in the temples or in the forehead), intensifies with a change in body position, loud sounds, a sharp inclusion of light. It is easier for the patient to lie on his side, his head thrown back. The more time passes, the stronger the pain, the less it gives in to pain relief;
- photophobia;
- increased skin sensitivity to previously invisible irritants;
- nausea, there may be vomiting, after which it does not become easier;
- in adults, the appearance of a rash of a dark (red, lilac, brown or black) color, which does not itch, does not fade when the skin is stretched under it, often begins to appear on the buttocks and legs, also refers to signs of meningitis.
These are the first signs of meningitis in adults. They can appear both suddenly and after previous diseases, such as rubella, chickenpox, measles, and mumps. These infections, although considered "childhood", are increasingly common in adults, and the older the person, the greater the likelihood of their complicated course.
Signs of meningitis in adults can occur after a person has suffered from sinusitis, frontal sinusitis, otitis media, and has 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 runny nose or otitis media (and often end) with meningitis, and if one does not deal with plastic surgery of the damaged bone structure, one of the meningitis can result in disability and even death.
Other signs of adult meningitis
Sometimes meningitis can occur in pain, not in the head, but in the back. It also occurs against a background of 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’s quite difficult to say exactly how adult meningitis manifests itself: atypical forms of the disease that occur with one or two symptoms are increasingly occurring, and those are not particularly pronounced. Sometimes even checking for meningeal symptoms is dubious. But if you are worried about a headache amid high fever, you don’t feel hungry and it’s very difficult to get up due to an increase in headache, call an ambulance and do not refuse to be hospitalized in an infectious diseases hospital.