Cerebral Blood Flow Evaluation by Transcranial Doppler in newborn with pyogenic meningitis 1915

Bacterial meningitis is one of the most serious deseases in early childhood with a high mortality in the first year of life. Our objective was study the cerebral blood flow by the resistance index (RI) and pulsatility index (PI) and theirs correlations between clinical development in newborns with pyogenic meningitis. Transcranial doppler ultrasound monitoring of cerebral blood flow(CBF) was performed on 16 newborn (age range 3 days to 30 days) who were admitted with a diagnosis of pyogenic meningitis. They were monitored during the course of their admission (04/95 to 06/97), RI and PI were measured in 3 arteries: anterior cerebral (ACA), internal carotid (ICA) and basilar (BA). The doppller were done at irregular intervals (mean: 8 days) and the patients allocated to two groups depending on clinical responses and radiological findings. In ACA, 7 of the patients who had bad clinical evolution there was an increased resistance index and in 9 patients with good evolution, the resistance index decreased. (p=0,01). The same correlation was found in ICA(p=0.03). These results suggest that a non-invasive monitoring by transfontanellar doppler may be helpful for early detection of deterioriation in cerebral haemodynamic and can be used to monitoring newborns.