Many patients with ventriculitis also experience some degree of hydrocephalus, which is the buildup of cerebrospinal fluid due to the inability of the ventricles to reabsorb and correctly circulate the fluid. Brain abscess is another common disorder resulting from the inflammation. If left untreated, ventriculitis can lead to serious inhibition of mental function and even death. The symptoms vary greatly, in part, because of the underlying or causing infection. While the inflammation can cause a number of effects such as those mentioned previously, the base infection could cause other symptoms that dont necessarily have to do with the ventriculitis, itself. One of the challenges doctors face in diagnosing ventriculitis is distinguishing indicative symptoms, in spite of the wide variety of possible presentations of the disease. A great deal of emphasis is being put on research into better and faster ways to diagnose ventriculitis without the delay inherent with microbiological testing of the cerebrospinal fluid.The progression of the disease is also largely dependent on the nature of the specific case. Depending on the underlying infection, the way it entered the brain, and the type and timing of treatment, the infection may spread or withdraw on the order of months or days. Ventriculitis is a very serious condition and should be treated early to ensure as little lasting damage as possible. Cause
Ventriculitis is caused by an infection of the ventricles, causing an immune response in the lining, which in turn, leads to inflammation. The ventriculitis, is in truth, a complication of the initial infection or abnormality.
This procedure is fairly effective, but is rarely able to isolate anaerobic organisms that may be causing the inflammation, giving cause for further research and procedural development.Though they present with similar symptoms and often occur in tandem, meningitis and ventriculitis are two different diseases, so physicians must be able to distinguish between the two. Meningitis is the inflammation of the protective lining of the central nervous system, called meninges. Because of the similar pathologies and cause of the two types of inflammation, they are difficult to differentiate using chemical testing, but show very different visual effects in both the MRI and CT scans, hence their use as a validation that the patient does, in fact, have ventriculitis and not another, similar condition such as meningitis. Treatment
Treatment of ventriculitis is critical. If left untreated, it could lead to severe brain damage and even death in some cases. Currently, the only commonly employed treatments of ventriculitis involve an antibiotic regimen targeting the underlying infection causing the inflammation. Typically, the physician will order the patient be placed on broad-spectrum antibiotics in order to manage the symptoms and control the infection while the cerebrospinal fluid samples are analyzed. When a specific bacterial or viral cause is found, the doctor will change the treatment accordingly. There is some debate as to the most effective antibiotics and the best ways to introduce the drugs (e.g. intravenously, orally, etc. ), however it is agreed that drug effectiveness is limited by the difficulty of non-invasively allowing the drugs to enter the cerebrospinal fluid.