Total neutrophils and age as prognostic factors of meningococcal sepsis

: Meningococcal sepsis is a frequent disease in our population with a bad prognosis even in a few hours. The search for easy and fast to obtain criteria of severity is essential decrease in order to the mortality rates. We have studied in 56 patients ranged from two months to six years, with bacteriological confirmation of meningococcal sepsis, the clinical and analytical parameters at admission, in order to find those parameters with a better correlation with the severity of the process. Global mortality was 25%. Eleven out of 21 children (52%) with less than 2,000 neutrophils in peripheral blood at the time of admission died, while only three died in the 35 resting group (p less than 0.01). When it was associated with a small age, less than two years, mortality raised up to 60%. In our series, the prognosis based upon the total neutrophils at admission, can be compared with that obtained from the five parameters of severity from Sthiem-Samrosch, that take an hour to be obtained. Absolute neutrophil count and age, can be obtained at the time of admission assessing the severity of the disease in short time.