- It is notifiable disease.
- Specific risk factors include having lived in India for years; exposure to an infectious TB case; residence in an institutional setting and homelessness.
- Symptoms may include cough, fever, and weight loss.
- Latent TB means you have the germ but you aren’t showing the symptoms and aren’t contagious.
- You can treat pulmonary TB with antibiotics, but you must finish all your medications to prevent it from returning.
- Pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious, infectious disease that attacks your lungs.
- If clinical suspicion of pulmonary TB, a patient should be isolated, a CXR should be obtained, 3 sputum samples should be collected for acid-fast bacilli smear and culture, and nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) should be performed on at least one respiratory specimen.
- Directly observed therapy is highly recommended and is particularly indicated in groups where adherence cannot be assumed.
- Early recognition and implementation of effective treatment for infectious TB is crucial in interrupting TB transmission.
