Article Text
Letters to the editor
The role of lumbar puncture in meningococcal disease
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Editor,—The numbers of cases of meningococcal disease diagnosed clinically and by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) have increased, while the numbers of culture confirmed cases and lumbar punctures are falling.1 ,2 This changing trend in case ascertainment was noted by Gill.3 Pollardet al seem to support this trend,4 preferring to avoid lumbar puncture in all patients with “clinically obvious” meningococcal disease because it “adds little …