Abstract
Introduction: tick-borne meningoencephalitis is the most common tick-borne disease in the Czech Republic. Even though it is a preventable infection, its incidence is not significantly decreasing.
Our article evaluates the clinical symptoms, disease severity and possible long-term consequences of this disease. Patients and methods: the patient sample included all patients with laboratory-confirmed tick-borne meningoencephalitis who were hospitalised and monitored at the Infectious, Parasite-borne and tropical disease Clinic at the Bulovka hospital, between the years 2006-2016.
The various types of the disease, severity and long-term consequences were retrospectively evaluated. Results: the sample consisted of 582 patients.
The most common clinical forms were meningoencephalitis (74.8%) and meningitis (16.8%). There were 55 patients with a severe course of the disease (9.5%), 22 women and 33 men, most commonly in the age group of 60-69 years of age. 38 patients required hospitalisation at an intensive care unit, 24 patients required ventilation. 45 patients experienced complications in the form of paresis (7.7%) - in 50% of these cases, the complications have persisted for more than one year since the acute disease, which means that the likelihood of permanent damage is high.
Conclusion: the disease took a severe course mostly in older patients, but serious complications were recorded in young patients as well. Since causal therapy is not available, vaccination remains the only reliable form of protection.