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Some time ago, in the ER we had a very large young man present with a heahacde and personality changes. This man was approximately 6'5 and 300 pounds. He progressively grew more agitated and confused. He was yelling, shouting, stripping, fighting .. it took approximately 8 people to hold him so we could medicated him. He broke locking wrist and ankle restraints he was so big and so strong. I tell you this because we were working him up for encephalitis. Luckily he did not have it, it was all an adverse reaction to a psych med.Encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain and meninges and is caused by a virus. Diagnosis is made by a lumbar puncture which for the above mentioned gentleman we would have had to intubate him to perform. You may do CT's or MRI's to look for swelling. Treatment consist of controlling high fever and intracranial pressure as well as maintaining fluid levels.I think it is very important in the medical field to have a broad understanding of many uncommon diseases so when one appears, you at least have a baseline of recognition to pull from. If one had no basis of encephalitis, one would have simply thought the gentleman mentioned was possibly on drugs or just had psychiatric issues and would not have been able to rule out a potential deadly disease.Another topic I found interesting, mostly because I have never heard of it, is abscesses of the brain. Who knew! Strep, Staph and E coli. can travel to the brain from other infected areas of the body and cause and abscess. Like most any other abscess you must open and drain it then treat with antibiotics. Just thinking about a pustule on the brain is both intriguing and disgusting. Watching and helping to perform I&D's on a normal abscess is cool/gross enough, I cannot imagine the squeamishness that a brain abscess would cause.
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(VISITOR) AUTHOR'S NAME
Tomy
MESSAGE TIMESTAMP
16 december 2014, 12:43:31
AUTHOR'S IP LOGGED
62.210.78.179
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