[Clinical and epidemiologic aspects of cryptococcosis in Kinshasa. Apropos of 15 personal cases].

The authors have recorded 15 cases in their eighteen months of hospital practice in Kinshasa. Fever and meningo-encephalitis are not specific symptoms and the detection of yeasts in the spinal fluid or sometimes in a lymph node is necessary to support the diagnosis. Direct examinations of the cerebro-spinal fluid is most often sufficient and easy for patients who have already had, in most cases, a long evolution giving way to an important proliferation of yeasts. Only one patient recovered by a treatment associating amphotericin B and ketoconazole. Another one, after an apparent recovery with the same treatment, died rapidly of acute tuberculosis.