Muhammad Shahid Ghaffar, Abdul Hafeez Smooro, Shabeeta Bai, Ejaz-ur Rehman, Asma Naz, Muhammad Saad Raza.
The sensitivity and specificity of latex particle agglutination to cerebrospinal fluid culture in etiological diagnosis of bacterial meningitis.
Pak J Surg Jan ;37(4):273-7.

Introduction: Bacterial meningitis is an acute and life threatening infection. It present as a medical emergency, which requires rapid diagnosis and immediate treatment to minimize the risk of morbidity and mortality. Unfortunately the presenting signs and symptoms may not be diagnostic and rarely give a clue to the identity of the causative agents. The laboratory test like latex particle agglutination test (LPA) is therefore necessary to the diagnosis, and establish the etiological agents. Main outcome measures is sensitivity and specificity of LPA test was estimated taking CSF culture as standard, result of LPA compared with CSF culture. Objective: To see the sensitivity and specificity of LPA to cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) culture in etiological diagnosis of bacterial meningitis particularly when antibiotic treatment has already been started. Design: Cross sectional study. Setting: National Institute of Child Health (NICH), Medical Unit-I. Duration of study: The duration of study was one year from 19th August 2019 to 19th August 2020. Result: In our study total number of the cases of 42, male to female ratio was 1.5:1. The most frequent symptoms were fever, vomiting, poor feeding and seizures. We found the causative organism of bacterial meningitis through LPA in CSF of 10 subjects in spite of no growth in CSF culture. In 2 CSF culture positive bacterial meningitis cases LPA is negative. We found the sensitivity of LPA test in CSF as 80% and specificity 68.7%. Conclusion: The study concludes that latex particle aggultination test is superior test for the etiological diagnosis of bacterial meningitis as compared to the conventional test like CSF culture. It has a high sensitivity and specificity and is rapid enough to guide the clinician for institution of proper antibiotics. So it should be include as an adjunct laboratory test for establishing the etiological diagnosis of bacterial meningitis particularly in pretreatment cases.

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