Intraventricular Antimicrobial Therapy for Intractable Ventriculitis: Two Case Reports

It is challenging to treat ventriculitis with parenteral treatment alone in some cases because of the difficulty involved in maintaining an appropriate level of antibiotics in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). We report two cases of ventriculitis who did not respond to intravenous (IV) antibiotics but were successfully treated with intraventricular antibiotics using IV agents. The first case was a four-month-old male patient with X-linked hydrocephalus. He showed ventriculitis due to Klebsiella pneumoniae not producing extended-spectrum β-lactamase and susceptible to third-generation cephalosporins and gentamicin, following ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunt. His condition did not improve during the 47 days of treatment with IV cefotaxime and meropenem. We achieved improvement in clinical presentation and CSF profile after three times of intraventricular gentamicin injection. The patient was discharged from the hospital with antiepileptic drugs. The second case was a six-month-old female patient with a history of neonatal meningitis complicated with hydrocephalus at one month of age, VP shunt at two months of age, followed by a methicillin-resistant coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS) shunt infection with ventriculitis after the shunt operation. CoNS ventriculitis recurred four weeks later. We failed to treat intractable methicillin-resistant CoNS ventriculitis with IV vancomycin for ten days, and thus intraventricular antimicrobial treatment was considered. Five times of intraventricular vancomycin administration led to improvement in clinical parameters. There were only neurological sequelae of delayed language development but no other major complications. Patients in these two cases responded well to intraventricular antibiotics, with negative CSF culture results, and were successfully treated for ventriculitis without serious complications.

뇌실염은 일반적으로 정맥 내 항생제를 통하여 치료하나, 불응성 뇌실염의 치료는 정맥 내 항생제 치료와 뇌실 내 항생제 치료의 병행이 요구되기도 한다. 이론적으로 항생제의 뇌실 내 투여는 정맥 내 단독 투여보다 뇌척수액에서 더 높은 항생제 농도에 도달할 수 있게 한다. 본 증례 보고는 기존의 전신 항생제 치료에 불응하는 폐렴 간균과 메티실린 내성 표피 포도상 구균에 각각 뇌실 내 겐타마이신과 반코마이신 투여를 통하여 뇌실염을 치료한 2례로서 이후에도 주요 합병증 등이 없어 이를 보고하는 바이다.