Most people do not know the difference between Viral and Bacterial Meningitis. Both Meningitis is very deadly. It can cause many things, from mental retardation to death. Organisms like E coli, pneuococcus, and a few others cause Meningitis. So if you give away symptoms in a hospital, they will start treating you before ever getting the results back. Just to make sure you are taken care of.
The symptoms are severe headache if exposed to any light, Stiff neck, Kernig’s sign (pain when you have your leg fully extended in the knee). The feeling of being really ill, high pulse rate, vomiting, odd behavior, rash, and low blood pressure. If you are feeling all of these symptoms, you then need to figure out if it is bacterial or viral.
Bacterial Meningitis has a bad prognosis, while viral Meningitis has a good prognosis. That means that, if you have Bacterial, then they need to start working on you immediately. So that they can get the bacteria under control before it has really damaging effects. If it is viral, they will still start working on you right away, but the viral strand in more self-limiting.
Viral Meningitis is more contagious to people who have weak immune systems. Mostly Infants and children younger than 5 years old. Most of the viral strands seen in the United States are during the summer months. Viral Meningitis is spread from person to person by either changing a dirty diaper or going to the bathroom and not washing your hands afterwards.
Normally with Viral, it can be handled with no real extreme medical treatment, but Bacterial, they need extreme medical treatment. Normally with viral, the meningitis lasts from 7-10 days. With Bacterial, the signs and symptoms can either come quickly or they can take several days to appear.
With infants it is harder to tell because they might have a fever and lack of alertness, but if you are not sure it is best to contact your doctor and have your infant checked out, because if it is not caught in time it can lead to seizure or coma.
Bacterial can be treated effectively by antibiotics, but while the antibiotics are at work it does lower the risk of death by 15%, but it is still to high a risk when it comes to infants and the elderly. The reason that the risk is still high for infants and the elderly is because they have weaker immune systems than a young teenager or adult.
