Incidence of sepsis from bacterial meningitis?

[stoic]

Random curiousity that google can't seem to remedy...

does anyone know the incidence sepsis occuring as a result of bacterial meningitis? from what i can tell it's more common in peds patients (like 2 years and younger) but i couldn't find much more than that.

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[southerndoc]

10-15% of patients with Neisseria meningitidis will develop sepsis. I am not aware of any statistics for pneumococcal meningitis, but there is the rare Austrian syndrome (pneumococcal pneumonia, endocarditis, and meningitis which often leads to sepsis). It's a wicked, wicked condition with a very high mortality rate. I saw it once in the MICU.

 

[stoic]

please forgive my continued ignorance (and thanks for indulging my curiousity):

so generally Neisseria meningitidis hangs out in the nasopharanyx (i think like 10-15% of the population will grow it from a culture). do people become infected with populations of Neisseria that were originally confined to their nasopharanyx or do they need to be exposed to bug from another source?

if the infection does come from the nasopharanyx of an indivual (ie no other exposure to other strains), how does it move from it's generally harmless location to the CSF?