Is CT scan poor predictor of complicated tuberculous meningitis?

Background: tuberculosis is one of the common infectious diseases in the developing world which results in high morbidity and mortality. tuberculous meningitis in adults is frequently secondary to or associated with reactivation of tuberculosis in extrameningeal foci leading to infarction,hydrocephalus and tuberculomas. ct scan brain is used for diagnosis of these complications. aim: to assess predictive value of ct scan brain in cases of complicated tbm. methods: cross sectional study was conducted in medical wards of mayo hospital,lahore. patients were selected based on convenient sampling. fifty patients were included in this study. all patients were evaluated through clinical examination,blood tests,csf examination,chest x-ray and ct scan. the data was analyzed using spss version 16. quantitative data was presented with the help of mean±s.d and qualitative data was presented with the help of frequency tables. chi-square test was applied to see the association between different variables. results: the mean age for male patients were 34±17 years and for female patients it was 29.81±17.72 years (p-value=0.398). cranial nerve involvement does not show any association with respect to gender (p-value=0.520). csf protein level and cell count were statistically same in both groups (p-value=0.107 & 0.936) respectively. vaccination status was not associated with the complications (p-value=0.370). ct scan was not predictive of the complicated cases having a high negative predictive value (64.3%). conclusion: ct scan brain poorly predicts complicated tbm.