Comparison of CSF serum albumin index with CSF glucose and CSF proteins in bacterial and viral meningitis

Background: meningitis is one of the severe inflammation of covings of brain and spinal cord in developed countries with serious sequelale. with routine diagnostic procedures delay in diagnosis of meningitis may cause with grave result for the patients.to speed the diagnostic procedures a new diagnostic measure the cerebro spinal fluid serum albumin index has been introduced in detection of meningitis. aim: to compare cerebro spinal fluid serum albumin index with csf glucose and csf proteins in determination of bacterial and viral meningitis. methods: a comparative cross section study was conducted in department of pns shifa karachi from march 2014 to august 2015 on190 patients of 1-16 years of both sex with history of sign and symptoms of disease i.e.,fever,headache,neck rigidity which were included in the study. results: the summarized results of study showed the mean age as 13.875±1.414 years. mean of csf albumin in is .4299 g/l with sd 0.44353 while serum albumin in g/l mean is 38.03 and sd 4.488 and mean of csf-serum albumin index is 11.7321. in student t test for csf serum albumin index the mean of csai was 7.47±0.5. the sensitivity of the test is 91.09% and specificity is 96.4% while diagnostic accuracy is 94%. conclusion: it is concluded that csai is a cost effective and efficient laboratory test for early diagnosis of bacterial and viral meningitis.