Clinical and laboratory characteristics of 104 cryptococcus meningoencephalitis cases

Calil Darzé, Rita Lucena, Irênio Gomes, Ailton Melo

With the purpose of describing the clinical and laboratory characteristics of cryptococcus meningoencephalitis, we reviewed the records of 104 patients admitted with this diagnosis at Couto Maia Hospital, reference for patients with infectious diseases in Salvador-BA Northeastern Brazil, from 1972 to 1996. The patients' age varied from 8 months to 79 years. Sixty-four (61.5%) patients were male. The duration of the disease varied from 2 to 150 days, average 27.7 days. The most common signs and symptoms were headache (92.7%), fever (84.4%) and neck stiffness (83.2%). The cell number in cerebrospinal fluid was greater than 4/mm > or = in 95.8% of the patients with lymphocyte predominance in 86.3% of the cases. The lethality rate was 42.7%.