Central Nervous System in Pneumonia (Nonsuppurative Pneumonic Encephalitis)

THE CEREBRAL complications associated with pneumonia have received but scant attention in American literature, although numerous reports are available in many of the foreign journals (Bonaba, Marcos and de Agorio 1 ; Comby 2 ; Bonaba, Boni and Barberouse 3 ; de Filippi and Fernandez 4 ; Nove-Josserand and associates 5 ; Gareiso and Sagreras 6 ; Mollard and Dufourt 7 ; Eschbach 8 ; Stephan 9 ; Comby 10 ). Actually, such complications are not infrequent and may appear at the onset or at the height of the pneumonia or during convalescence, after the patient has become afebrile and appears well along the road to recovery. Cases often reveal a wide variability of symptoms, ranging from such generalized complaints as headache, vomiting, vertigo and lethargy to the more dramatic complications of coma, convulsions, delirium, monoplegia, hemiplegia, athetoses and psychic disturbances (Baker and Noran 11 ). The most common picture seen is that of acute meningoencephalitis. In many instances, after a