The purpose of this retrospective study was to evaluate the risk factors, laboratory findings and patient's outcomes in 94 patients with central nervous system infection. The patients were those hospitalized in the Clinic of Infectious Diseases, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun, Turkey, in the period between January 2005 and August 2007. Among these patients the etiological patterns consisted of 44 (46.8%) episodes of bacterial, 27 (28.7%) of viral and 9 (9.5%) of tuberculosis origin. Seven patients (7.4%) had meningitis with Brucella spp. and other five patients (5.3%) had brain abscess with different microorganisms. One patient (1.06%) had neuro-syphilis and the remaining one (1.06%) had fungal meningitis. Among 44 bacterial meningitis episodes, cerebrospinal fluid culture positivity was 27.24% (12 patients). Of the 27 viral meningitis patients, 17 (62.9%) had pathological EEG findings and 12 (44.4%) patients had pathological radiographic features. Mycobacterium tuberculosis was cultured in only two (22.2%) out of nine tuberculosis meningitis patients. Over all fatality rates in the study period according to the etiological pattern was as follows: 4 (9%) bacterial meningitis, 2 (7.5%) viral meningitis and 2 (22.2%) tuberculosis meningitis patients were lost with various complications.