Briefing On Tuberculosis

Hi, my name is Dr Anant Gupta, I am a specialist in respiratory and sleep disorders. I have 5 post graduate degrees/Diplomas and have been trained in both India and England. I will be speaking to you about the biggest health problem of our country any guesses, it is Tuberculosis. Why I say it is the biggest health problem because every year nearly 22 Lac people of our country are diagnosed with tuberculosis and you can imagine 2 lac of these people die because of Tuberculosis. It is said that one-third of the Indian population is infected by the bug which causes tuberculosis namely Mycobacterium tuberculosis and given the size of the population you can just imagine the numbers. What is good is that not all people infected with the bug developed the active disease and many of them can have an asymptomatic infection, what we call as latent tuberculosis. But in those who developed the disease, it can give rise to serious complications and even death. So what are the common symptoms of Tuberculosis, cough, in fact, any a cough lasting for more than 2 weeks should always be evaluated for tuberculosis, fever which especially rise in the evening night sweats, loss of appetite, loss of weight, blood in the sputum, sputum, chest pain and others? Tuberculosis can affect any side of the body but most commonly it affects the lungs, it is very important to diagnose this disease early and now we have a lot of advanced tests which are available which can reliably diagnose tuberculosis disease. So if you have any of these symptoms you should consult a TB specialist. Now coming to the treatment of tuberculosis unlike a simple infection TB treatment requires a lot of time and in fact, at least 6 months of treatment has to be taken by the patient. Many of the patients are not compliant, they give up treatment do not take it properly which is very bad because it can lead to the development of drug-resistant tuberculosis. It is the major problem because treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis is very difficult, very expensive and the medicines have a lot of side effects as well. The most common reason for the development of drug tuberculosis, I would say patient not taking the treatment properly and the doctor not prescribing the treatment properly. So it is very important that TB treatment is given by specialist by training in TB and can give a very effective treatment so that the patient can be cured and he does not develop drug-resistant tuberculosis. I would like to thank you for the patient listening, if you want to consult me I am available at Shantam Chest Sleep Disorders Centre in Paschim Vihar and you can also approach me through Lybrate. Thank you.