Brain Abscess Treatments and Outcomes

Brain abscess can arise from a variety of factors, with most occurring as a result of an underlying disease or systemic infection, trauma or surgery that disrupts the natural protective barrier surrounding the brain, or use of immunosuppressive drugs. About half of all cases occur due to bacteria entering the brain through spreading from other parts of the body. The most frequent symptom of a brain abscess is headache. Neurological signs may present themselves dependent on the site of the abscess. These signs can be subtle for days to weeks until they’re notices. Behavioral changes can also occur if the abscesses are present in frontal or right temporal lobes. If the abscess is present in the brain stem or cerebellum, then palsy, various gait disorders or altered mental states can occur. The manifestations of abscesses usually become more evident as the damage grows; however, they symptoms can be difficult to recognize because of sedation of the patient, or the confusion of the symptoms as a result of other underlying diseases.

Several treatments have been developed or refined to provide better outcomes. Neurosurgery can be employed for abscesses at least 1 cm in diameter. A catheter can be used to allow for continuous drainage from the cavity, but this technique is not usually recommended. Antimicrobial therapy is also really successful. Finding out what is causing the abscess and then treating it with the proper counteracting medicine can prove to be very useful. However, any delay in beginning antimicrobial therapy can result in poor outcomes. All in all, these newer treatments have led to an improvement in the outcome of patients with brain abscesses. Mortality rates have dropped from 40% in 1960 to 15% in the last 10 years. Where as before most patients would die from an untreated or unrecognized abscess, 70% of patients now have a good outcome with no or minimal neurological interventions.

This article game me hope for a health problem that I’ve only heard about once or twice, but from what I previously learned did not have such great odds of survival. Medicine is always improving, but there are still several issues that even the best doctors struggle to control. This article originally caught by attention because of the subject material in general, but secondly because they mentioned the microbe Staphylococcus aureus. S. aureus is my favorite microbe because of the range of issues it can cause. It typically lives on your skin, so it is a huge part of our normal flora. However, it can take over and lead to minor problems such as pimples and cavities, to the spread of more major infections such as MRSA, staph infections, or even brain abscesses. It just found it super interesting to learn more about what my favorite microbe is capable of.

Source: http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu/docview/1550185719?pq-origsite=summon