Are symptoms of meningitis and shaken baby syndrome in any way similar?

i know someone who has a baby in the hospital in picu who is being treated for meningitis, doctors can't do a spinal tap because the baby is swollen so bad. I have a suspion the baby may have been shaken. she was fine about 8:00 one night and about 12:00 she was crying so hard that her eyes were crossing and she had a mild siezure alittle earlier and another one while in the er before being life flighted to a children's hospital. i hope i am just being paranoid but from waht i have read the systoms are very similar. please help

The symptoms you describe certainly sound like early bacterial meningitis.

If the doctors were worried about shaken baby syndrome, there are a couple of tools they could use to help sort things out.

First, it's traditionally believed that an examination of the retina by an ophthalmologist could diagnose shaken baby syndrome with a high degree of accuracy - the doctor looks for spots of blood in various layers of the retina. More recently, some have cast doubt on this so there is some debate here.

Second, MRI or CT can often detect brain hemorrhages from shaken baby syndrome.

I don't know what the symptoms of shaken baby is, but the meningitis can cause seizures and eye crossing, as the brain is affected (sometimes there may be too much fluid in the brain and it's putting pressure on the brain which can cause such problems)