ABSTRACT

The aim of our retrospective study is to present the histopat-hological features of central nervous system infections 103 central nervous system infections determined at autopsies, per-formed in Forensic Medicine Council from 1998 to 2002 were analysed. Cases were classified according to age, gender, mic-roscopic features of brain infection and the cause of death.

Microscopically, cases were classified as encephalitis and me-ningitis. Also brain abcesses and serebritis were evaluated. In 50,4% of our cases the cause of death was natural, and 49,6% were classified as trauma complications. 85 were (83,3%) male and 18 (16,6%) were female. Microscopically we found menin-gitis at 73 cases (70,87%), 60 (58,25%) of them were bacterial in origin, 8 cases (%7,76%) were lymphocytic, 5 cases (4,85%) were chronic granulomatous meningitis. One nocardia and 4 tu-berculosis meningitis were found in chronic granulomatous meningitis group. 19 cases of encephalitis (18,44%) were found. Five cases (4,85%) were diagnosed as encephalitis due to Rabi-es, 1 case (0,97%) as HIV encephalitis, 1 case (0,97%) as PMLE, 4 cases (3,88%) as Prion disease and 3 cases (2,91%) had menin-goencephalitis. Eight cases (7,76%) were classified as NOS en-cephalitis since any etiologic agent could be isolated. One of the 6 cases (5,82%) diagnosed as brain abcesses was mycotic. 2 cases (1,94%) with nonsuppurative serebritis were found.

Pathology of the central nervous system infections is very complex and overlapping. In conclusion, it needs a multidiscip-lianary laboratory investigations in the pathology of infections diseases.