Meningeal symptoms

Inflammations and lesions of the brain envelopes are more than serious problems that require complex and prompt treatment. Meningeal symptoms can reliably diagnose the disease and start treatment on time. They can appear because of too high pressure or as a result of hemorrhage. Some of them can be recognized on their own, identification of others is impossible without the intervention of a specialist.

The main symptoms of meningeal syndrome

Symptoms of meningeal syndrome exist a lot, and most of them are unique. That is, to confuse signs of meningeal syndrome with any other diseases is quite difficult. Many specialists studied the disease. The most common symptoms that they managed to identify are:

  1. The main sign of meningeal syndrome is the rigidity of the cervical and occipital muscles. Symptoms can manifest in a strong or moderate degree. Rigidity of neck muscles is easy to recognize: the patient can not touch his chin to his chest. Moreover, contact does not occur even with a mild symptom. And in patients with severe neck stiffness the head and at all can always be slightly tucked back.
  2. People with meningeal syndrome often complain of headaches . In most cases, pain sensations creep across the entire head, but sometimes they can concentrate in one place: the nape, temples, frontal part. In some patients, the headache is accompanied by vomiting, which can not be avoided.
  3. Another common meningeal symptom is Kernig. It consists in the impossibility of unbending the knee bent in the knee. It is not difficult to determine the symptom: the patient needs to bend his leg 90 degrees and try to level it. With meningeal syndrome, this is unrealistic: during attempts to unbend the knee joint, the leg is bent involuntarily, and the patient feels pain.
  4. A true sign of meningeal syndrome is Gillen's symptom. It is checked by having it pressed on the quadriceps muscle of the thigh. If a person really suffers from a meningeal syndrome, he will involuntarily bend his leg in the knee and lift it to his chest. The check is carried out for the patient in the reclining position.
  5. Neurologists can also determine meningeal syndrome with the help of Bekhterev's symptom. With light tapping along the zygomatic arch, the headache intensifies, and the face curves in a painful grimace.
  6. Symptom Fanconi states the disease, if the patient can not rise with unbent fixed knee joints.

Meningeal symptoms of Brudzinsky

Most specialists diagnose meningeal syndrome begin by checking four main symptoms of Brudzinsky:

  1. With a cheek symptom, due to pressure on the cheek in the area under the cheekbone, the patient's shoulder rises from the corresponding side.
  2. To check the upper symptom the patient is placed in a horizontal position. When trying to bend the head in the neck, the patient's legs flex in the hip and knee joints, while pulling up to the stomach, as during the check of Gillen's symptom.
  3. Similarly, the legs of the patient bend and when pressing on the pubis - a symptom of the pubic or middle.
  4. The lower symptom is checked by analogy with Kernig's symptom: the patient can not straighten the knee bent in the knee, but with the other leg is pulled to the stomach.

With different forms of meningitis, symptoms can manifest themselves in whole or in part.