The Relevance of Performing Lumbar Puncture in Infants Aged 3 to 12 Months With First Episode of Febrile Convulsion

Overview

The actual recommendations for infants aged 3 to 12 months presented with first episode of Febrile Convulsions highly recommend performing lumbar puncture in order to rule out Bacterial Meningitis. On the other hand, recent studies in the era of anti Pneumococcal vaccination arise the question if in the presence of a normal physical examination those recommendations are still relevant. The purpose of this study is to summarized retrospectively the clinical records of all the infants admitted to the pediatric wards in the ten years period since 2000 to 2010 in order to record the incidence of Bacterial Meningitis among infants admitted with the First episode of Febrile Convulsions.

Demographic data, including ethnic origin, age an gender will be recorded. The type of Convulsions (Simple or Complex), duration, and time since the fever was noticed will be also recorded. Another data that will be summarized included: previous antibiotic treatment, physical examination with special emphasis on neurological examination and meningeal signs, routine laboratory analysis including blood count and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) results and the final diagnosis including the cause of fever.

Conditions

Eligibility