Dados do Trabalho

Título

Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings in patients with infectious cerebrospinal fluid (CSF): A Single-center Experience from a Tertiary Care Hospital in Niteroi, Brazil.

Resumo

Central nervous system (CNS) infections are a significant cause of mortality and morbidity world-wide. Infectious diseases of the CNS include a wide spectrum of infections caused by various pathogens affecting one or more of these components. Despite advances in medicine, the accurate diagnosis of a specific disease of CNS infections has proved to be very challenging, as its clinical variable severity and radiological presentations are very general and nonspecific. In most cases, the etiological diagnosis is only confirmed with the investigation of the pathogen in the cerebrospinal fluid. This study aimed to know and describe, through the cases, the MRI findings in patients diagnosed with infectious diseases through the investigation of the pathogen in the cerebrospinal fluid and followed up in a tertiary hospital in Niteroi-Brazil, from December 2019 to March 2022. Among the 17 patients studied, the most common etiologic agent was varicella zoster virus (5 cases). Other etiological agents found in the study were Epstein Barr virus, herpes virus type 1, herpes virus type 2, Candida spp, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Enterovirus. what was most observed were images suggestive of diffusion restriction with an infarct pattern, some being a confounding factor, due to the fact that the CNS infection was still unknown at the time of the first MRI. We can then conclude that in critically ill patients, with suspected CNS infection, the imaging appearance may appear as recent infarctions.