Cefotaxime in treatment of meningitis and ventriculitis? Evaluation of drug concentrations in human cerebrospinal fluid.

In three groups of patients levels of cefotaxime in serumand cerebrospinal fluid were determined. Therapeutic value and efficacy are discussed in meningitis patients. Nine concentrations of cefotaxime in lumbar and ventricular CSF out of 19 in a group of seven neurosurgical patients with mild to moderate impairment of the blood-CSF-barrier were higher than 0.5 micrograms/ml. In seven determinations in a second group of six patients with no or very little dysfunction of the blood-cerebrospinal-fluid barrier only twice cefotaxime was not detectable in lumbar CSF. Concentrations of cefotaxime in 25 determinations of lumbar or ventricular CSF in six patients with bacterial meningitis ranged from 1.1 micrograms/ml to 19.2 micrograms/ml. Treatment with cefotaxime alone was successful in a patient with E. coli meningitis and ventriculitis after infection of a ventriculo-atrial shunt and in another patient with pneumococcal meningitis and penicillin allergy. The other four patients with bacterial meningitis were treated successfully by antibiotics including cefotaxime.