Knee pain: an unusual late complication of meningococcal septicaemia

Abstract

Meningococcal disease remains an important cause of mortality and morbidity in the paediatric population. Survivors of invasive meningococcal disease remain at risk from the long-term sequelae of microvascular disease. Chronic orthopaedic sequelae have been reported infrequently in the orthopaedic and radiology literature and there are no reports in the Emergency Medicine literature. We report the case of a 7-year-old boy who presented to the Emergency Department with a limp; having survived invasive meningococcal disease at the age of 14 months. His radiographs revealed some of the long-term sequelae of this severe disease. We review the literature around the long-term orthopaedic sequelae of meningococcal disease.