Risk of bacterial meningitis in young children with a first seizure in the context of fever: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Of major concern in any febrile child presenting with a seizure is the possibility of bacterial meningitis (BM). We did a systematic review to estimate the risk of BM among various subgroups of young children with a first seizure in the context of fever, and to assess the utility of routine lumbar puncture (LP) in children with an apparent first FS.

Methods/principal Findings: MEDLINE, INIST, and the COCHRANE Library databases were searched from inception to December 2011 for published studies, supplemented by manual searches of bibliographies of potentially relevant articles and review articles.