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Main Clinical Presentations

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Cranial Osteomyelitis

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Abstract

There is no single clinical sign or symptom that can independently diagnose cranial osteomyelitis. The disease may be asymptomatic or may present with a number of nonspecific manifestations, and the clinical findings are extremely variable. This variation depends on many factors such as age of onset, duration of disease, route of infection, underlying etiology, causative pathogens, comorbidities, anatomic location of infection (cranial vault versus skull base) and its extension. The duration of symptoms is typically several months in chronic infections. If this duration is less than 1 month, the infection is considered acute. In this chapter, the focus will be on the most common bacterial forms of cranial osteomyelitis encountered in clinical practice. Usually, five syndromes dominate the presenting clinical manifestations including general and/or regional signs of infection, local cardinal signs of inflammation, local signs of infection, and more rarely meningism and neurologic disturbances. However, we should be aware that clinical symptoms of chronic osteomyelitis may be less or more prominent than in cases of acute form.

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  1. Department of Neurosurgery Avicenne Military Hospital of Marrakech, University of Mohammed V in Rabat, Marrakech, Morocco

    Ali Akhaddar

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Akhaddar, A. (2016). Main Clinical Presentations. In: Cranial Osteomyelitis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30268-3_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30268-3_6

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