title: Bacterial Meningitis after Cochlear Implantation among Children without Polyvalent Conjugate Vaccine: A Brief Report of an Iranian Cohort Study on 371 Cases.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Regarding risk of bacterial meningitis (BM) after Cochlear implantation (CI), it was suggested to receive polyvalent conjugate vaccine. We aimed to estimate the prevalence of BM post CI in child recipients who do not receive polyvalent vaccine.
  
  
  METHODS
  We enrolled 371 children who had received cochlear implants from 2007 to 2010. None of them received pre or post implantation polyvalent conjugate vaccine for BM. We followed all of them for BM for 2 years after implantation.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We detected only one female case of BM (0.3% of patients) with the age of 24 months. The mean age of noninfected children was 36.7 ± 23.2 months. The education level of parents was "college level or higher" in less than half of them, and about 65% of patients were products of consanguineous marriage.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our findings indicated that the incidence of BM was not higher in our cochlear implanted children who did not receive immunization than patients from countries in which routine vaccination is done. We suggest that although proper immunization is recommended before surgery, this procedure could be performed without vaccination, especially in developing countries that face financial problems for preparing vaccines.
authors.affiliation: Health Research Center, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Shahla
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Afsharpaiman
authors.affiliation: New Hearing Technologies Research Center, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Amirsalari
authors.affiliation: New Hearing Technologies Research Center, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Mohammad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ajalloueyan
authors.affiliation: Chemical Injuries Research Center, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Amin
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Saburi
keywords: Bacterial meningitis; cochlear implantation; hearing loss; immunization