
Health Dictionary
Reliable, easy-to-read patient information on common medical conditions — written in plain language, free of jargon, and grounded in current evidence. Browse the most frequent diagnoses, understand what they mean for everyday life, and learn which steps and questions help you have a focused conversation with your doctor.
Meningococcemia screening
Introduction
Screening
Screening
- Routine antimicrobial susceptibility testing of meningococcal isolates is not currently recommended.
- Surveillance of susceptibility patterns in populations should be conducted in order to monitor trends in N. meningitidis susceptibility.
- State and local health departments should notify the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) if resistance to ciprofloxacin or other agents used for treatment or prophylaxis is detected.
- Passive and active surveillance systems are used to monitor meningococcal disease, which is a reportable disease in the United States. Through a national passive reporting system, state health departments collect and transmit weekly reports of cases to CDC through the National Electronic Telecommunications System for Surveillance (NETSS).
- The goals of meningococcal surveillance are:
- To detect outbreaks of meningococcal disease so that appropriate control measures can be promptly instituted, and
- To assess changes in the epidemiology of meningococcal disease over time to permit the most efficient allocation of resources and formulation of the most effective disease control and prevention policies.
Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]Â ; Associate Editor(s)-in-Chief: Ammu Susheela, M.D. [2]
