Late osteoarticular lesions following meningococcemia in children: case reports
Complicações osteoarticulares tardias de meningococcémia na criança: casos clínicos
Late osteoarticular lesions (LOAL) following meningococcemia in children with disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) occur in 1,5% of cases, and may only appear years or months after the acute phase. They mainly affect children that had the disease during the first years of life, and usually envolves the metaphyses and epiphyses from the long bones of the legs, particularly the femur and tibia. The axial skeleton is generally spared.
We analyzed 174 patients with meningococcal disease (MD) - all with positive cultures of blood and/or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for Neisseria meningitidis (Nm) - treated in the Coimbra Pediatric Hospital (CPH)’s, a terciary Hospital, between 1984 and 2002 and with at least 5 years of follow-up. (...continua)
Keywords: meningococcemia, Neisseria meningitidis, disseminated intravascular coagulation, osteoarticular lesions, sequellae.
Palavras-chave: meningococcémia, coagulação intravascular disseminada, complicações osteoarticulares, sequelas.
