There's no specific presenting symptoms to
help you make the diagnosis of encephalitis.
As we said before, there's a wide array of symptoms.
Patients can present with mild confusion or can present with coma.
They often present with seizures and focal neurologic symptoms.
In assessing patients with encephalitis, it's important to ask
about things like recent exposures, travel as well as vaccination.
To give you some examples,
arboviruses are more common during the mosquito season.
So it's helpful to know, you know, where patients have been, where they've
been, may have been exposed to mosquitoes and also the time of year.
Rabies, encephalitis is a uncommon form of encephalitis.
But, is often associated or usually is associated with animal bites.
So, getting that history is very helpful.
There might be certain types of encephalitities
that are more common in your area, for whatever reason, during
that particular time of year or some unusual association has just developed.
So knowing about what's prevalent in your
area is very helpful, and then knowing about
just general exposures to other types of animals
because they're often intermediate host of these pathogens.