• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.283-288
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• 1998

Recurrent meningitis in children is not only a potentially life threatening condition, but often involves the child in the trauma though repeated hospital admissions and multiple invasive investigations to find the underlying causes. Symptoms and signs of CSF rhinorrhea or otorrhea are infrequent in these patients and difficult to diagnose in young children. All young children treated for meningitis should then be administered an evoked potential audiometry as a post-treatment test. If sensorineural hearing loss is identified, the clinician should be alerted to the possibility of CSF leakage as the cause of the meningitis. Radiologic studies should be performed to rule out preexisting congenital, or acquired, abnormalities requiring surgical exploration. Two young children with recurrent meningitis due to a right cochlear aplasia and a cribriform plate defect caused by trauma are presented to illustrate the problems of diagnosis and management. A review of literatures will also be presented briefly.