Anyone listening to the radio or watching television this week will be aware that it is National Meningitis Awareness Week. The aim of this is to highlight the risks to health posed by meningitis, and the symptoms and signs of the disease. 
 
The Meningitis Research Foundation provides excellent material for both patients and healthcare professionals about meningitis and I would recommend you look at their website http://www.meningitis.organd the test yourself case histories in the document “doctor’s in training” http://www.meningitis.org/assets/x/50156. The earlier meningitis is diagnosed and treated the better the outcome, so Meningitis Awareness Week is definitely a good thing BUT should meningitis really be compared to meningococcal sepsis?! 

The identification of bacteria causes a lot of confusion and difficulty for students and doctors and having recently seen the microbiology lecture notes of a final year medical student, I’m not surprised. The notes talked about things
like “catalase positive DNAse positive, slide coagulase positive Gram-positive cocci” and “lactose-fermenting, indole positive, citrate negative, Gram-negative bacilli” which to anyone other than a microbiologist is just so much gibberish! (For the record, the first is Staphylococcus aureus and the second is E. coli).

“Sepsis claims over 37,000 lives in the United Kingdom
annually; more than breast cancer and bowel cancer combined”1. Back in 2005 the Surviving Sepsis Campaign attempted to rectify this by raising awareness and improving the management of septic patients with evidence based
guidelines. However these guidelines are, “delivered in fewer than 1 in 5 [septic] patients in the UK”1.

So could you recognise a patient with sepsis and reel-off an initial management plan? No?