Sporadic encephalitis

Sporadic encephalitis is a relatively rare brain symptom disease, which can cause serious harm to our human body. If we do not take timely treatment measures, it may affect the safety of our lives. In order to help more patients with sporadic encephalitis get rid of the effects of the disease as soon as possible, we recommend that everyone understand the early symptoms of sporadic encephalitis introduced in this article so that we can better prevent its occurrence.

Because many friends do not know about sporadic encephalitis, and do not know what the early symptoms of sporadic encephalitis are. But as long as you follow our steps and understand the content below, I believe you can better understand its existence in life.

Some patients have prodromal symptoms, such as headache, fatigue, poor appetite, vomiting, sleep disorders or decreased mental activity a few days before the onset of the disease. The onset is acute or subacute, and common first symptoms include mental disorders, paralysis, headache, fever, impaired consciousness, nausea and vomiting, and epileptic convulsions. According to the main clinical manifestations of patients, they can often be divided into the following three types.

1. Mental disorder type:

Common symptoms include emotional disorders (emotional instability, indifference, depression, euphoria, fear), intellectual disabilities (decreased ability to understand, remember, calculate, judge, and associate), thinking disorders (mutism, talkativeness, incoherent speech, and delusions), and behavioral disorders (reduced movements, increased movements, impulsivity, and stupor). Mental disorders often coexist with disorders of consciousness (delirium, confusion, confusion). According to the main mental symptoms of patients, it can be divided into subtypes such as catatonic syndrome, schizophrenia-like syndrome, and dementia-like syndrome. During the progression of the disease, the manifestations of mental disorders often change, such as from psychomotor excitement to psychomotor inhibition. Generally, neurological signs can be detected during the course of the disease, such as hemiplegia, positive pyramidal tract signs, etc. Laboratory tests, such as cerebrospinal fluid, electroencephalogram, evoked potential, head CT and MRI, often show certain changes, which can be used to distinguish it from non-organic mental illnesses such as affective psychosis and schizophrenia.

2. Coma type:

Severe disturbances of consciousness occur rapidly after onset, such as coma of varying degrees or special disturbances of consciousness. In patients with damage to both cerebral hemispheres, the symptoms are decorticate state and coma with eyes open; when the upper brainstem is damaged, decerebrate rigidity occurs; when the basal ganglia are damaged, extrapyramidal involuntary movements such as tremor and chorea may occur; when the pyramidal tract is damaged, hemiplegia or bilateral hemiplegia occurs. Patients may develop pneumonia, urinary tract infection, etc. due to coma. The duration of coma varies, and mental abnormalities may occur during the process of improvement of consciousness disorder. Certain neuropsychiatric sequelae may remain after awakening.

3. Brain tumor type:

The main symptoms are headache, vomiting, papilledema, paralysis, partial motor epileptic seizures, etc., often accompanied by varying degrees of impaired consciousness. Although these symptoms mimic those of intracranial space-occupying lesions, they have an acute onset and rapidly worsen, with the onset to peak of symptoms sometimes taking only a few hours and most times within a month. Intracranial pressure increases dramatically, and some patients may quickly develop intracranial pressure crisis symptoms. Both head CT and MRI examinations may reveal diffuse cerebral edema and areas of cerebral softening, which are helpful in distinguishing them from brain tumors, but the final diagnosis sometimes requires craniotomy or stereotactic drilling and puncture for brain tissue biopsy.

In order to help more friends recognize the early symptoms of sporadic encephalitis, we hope that everyone can remember the three common symptoms introduced in the article. At the same time, I hope you will publicize the early symptoms of this disease to your friends, so that they can know the existence of sporadic encephalitis more quickly in their lives and get better treatment for the disease faster, thus ensuring our health.