Early symptoms of encephalitis

Encephalitis is a common brain disease in infants and young children. If encephalitis is not treated in time, severe encephalitis may even accompany a person throughout his or her life, affecting his or her intelligence and reaction ability. Of course, if encephalitis can be discovered and treated in time, the harm of encephalitis can be minimized or even cured. To treat it, you actually need to understand the early symptoms of encephalitis.

The early symptoms of encephalitis are actually similar to those of a cold. The patient may have fever, loss of appetite and other problems. Of course, in clinical practice, infants with encephalitis will also have headaches, but if treated with normal methods for treating colds, it will not be effective.

The early symptoms of encephalitis are similar to those of a cold.

Encephalitis is divided into viral encephalitis, bacterial encephalitis and tuberculous encephalitis. The first two are more common. The severity of encephalitis mainly depends on the part of the nervous system infected, and the symptoms can be mild or severe.

For children, encephalitis can be the first sign of the disease, or it can develop into encephalitis if colds or diarrhea are not treated in time. Take viral cold as an example. At the beginning, the virus only exists in the lymphatic system, and then invades the upper respiratory tract, at which time the symptoms of a cold appear. If not treated promptly, the virus will "infiltrate" the blood. As the blood flows, the virus may settle somewhere in the brain, causing encephalitis.

The early symptoms of encephalitis are similar to those of a cold. Patients will experience fever, body aches, poor appetite, etc. As the disease progresses, patients will experience neurological manifestations such as drowsiness, excitement, and convulsions. Children with encephalitis are often misdiagnosed as having a cold in the early stages, missing the best time for treatment. Therefore, if a child shows cold symptoms, abnormal mental and behavioral symptoms, or infants and young children refuse to eat and have headaches, and general cold treatments are ineffective, you should be highly alert to the possibility of encephalitis and take the child to a regular hospital to see a specialist for examination in time.

Lumbar puncture is the gold standard for diagnosing encephalitis

Encephalitis is a common disease and also one that is easier to treat. As long as it is diagnosed promptly and treated correctly, it can usually be cured in one week to half a month.

How to detect encephalitis early? Examination is important. In clinical practice, when doctors highly suspect encephalitis and request a lumbar puncture for the child, some parents of the children are unwilling to accept this examination method and prefer to do an electroencephalogram. In fact, lumbar puncture is the gold standard for diagnosing encephalitis. If the results show that the number of cells per cubic millimeter of cerebrospinal fluid is greater than 10, it can be confirmed as encephalitis. Electroencephalogram (EEG) is very useful in diagnosing epilepsy, but it is not sensitive in diagnosing encephalitis.

The reason why parents are reluctant to undergo lumbar puncture is that they are worried about leaving sequelae for their children. For example, they are worried that it will affect their growth, whether they will become hunchbacks when they grow up, or whether it will cause paralysis. Liu Yanping said that although lumbar puncture is an invasive examination, it will only cause short-term effects on the child, such as bleeding, mild pain, etc., and will not have any impact on the child's long-term development. On the contrary, if parents insist on not performing lumbar puncture on their children, delaying the diagnosis of encephalitis, it will leave them with lifelong regrets.

Encephalitis is very harmful to children, and it is also the most difficult to detect. Therefore, I would like to remind all parents and friends that if your children have the above symptoms, they must undergo scientific diagnosis to minimize the harm of encephalitis.