The Association between Meningitis and Myopia in the Pediatric Population: A Systematic Review

Meningitis in the pediatric population is highly associated with complications due to its non-specific nature and early use of antibiotics. A common complication noted to occur in the setting of meningitis is visual impairment. However, a lesser exposed aspect is the connection of meningitis with myopia. The objective of this systematic review is to analyze the potential association between meningitis with myopia and any underlying factors contributing to it. The literature was gathered from PubMed for this article review using conventional keywords and medical subject heading (Mesh) subheadings. Regular keywords were: Bacterial Meningitis and myopia. Mesh subheadings used were: meningitis, bacterial/complications, meningitis, bacterial/epidemiology, and myopia/etiology. Following the application of inclusion/exclusion criteria, a total of 6,483 publications were obtained. A lack of relevancy to the outcomes of interest led to the removal of 6,382 of these publications. Following this, a refined manual search was done with the remaining 101 articles. Finally, 22 publications were selected for review after the removal of duplicates. Myopia was linked to meningitis in a variety of these studies. On further review, the studies revealed that myopia occurred in the presence of meningitis sequelae such as vasculitis, vasospasm, and elevated intracranial pressure.