The Optimal Management of Acute Febrile Encephalopathy in the Aged Patient: A Systematic Review

Table 1

Summary of the analyzed studies about the frequency of CNS infection in elderly patients with AFE.

	Warshaw and Tanzer [18]	D’Amore and Nelson [19]	Shah et al. [20]	Alavi and Moogahi [21]
Number of participants	81	191	125	60
Number of elderly with AFE	81	191	41	60
Study design	Retrospective	Retrospective	Retrospective	Not mentioned
Location	Cincinnati, Ohio.; Single center	Manhasset, NY.; Multicenter	New York, USA.; Single center	Ahwaz, Iran.; Single center
Primary end point	To determine the value of the CSF examination	To analyze the contribution of LP	To determine diagnostic utility of LP	To determine the necessity of LP
Inclusion criteria	Elderly patients with fever and delirium	Elderly patients with fever and altered mental status	Febrile and afebrile elderly patients with altered mental status	Elderly patients with confusion and fever
Frequency of CNS infections among participants	2 (2/4%)	35 (21%)	20%	6 (10%)
Frequency of CNS infection among elderly with AFE	2 (2/4%)	35 (21%)	10 (24%)	6 (10%)

AFE: acute febrile encephalopathy; LP: lumbar puncture; CSF: cerebrospinal fluid; CNS: central nervous system.