Tuberculosis is caused due to infection with the mycobacterium tuberculosis, but everyone, who gets contaminated with the germ, does not get the disease. Most of the time, the immune system can prevent you from becoming sick and only about 10% of people infected with tuberculosis go to on to develop tuberculosis. The symptoms of tuberculosis do not become evident in most cases, unless the disease has advanced.
The common symptoms of tuberculosis include cough for a prolonged duration that is more than three weeks, unexplained or intended weight loss, fatigue, general feeling of tiredness, fever, sweating at night, chills and loss of appetite. Having these signs and symptoms does not mean that you have tuberculosis. There are many other diseases which have the same symptoms. So you need to undergo various tests, so that you are sure that you have tuberculosis. Signs and symptoms of active tuberculosis may also vary depending on the organ that is affected. Most of the times, the lungs of the patients are affected. Symptoms of tuberculosis of the lungs include cough for three or more weeks, blood in cough, chest pain or pain while breathing or coughing. Tuberculosis can also affect organs apart from the lungs. The other organs that are affected by tuberculosis include lymph nodes, genitourinary nodes, bone and joint sites, lining covering the outside of the gastrointestinal tract.
A very common question that a patient suffering from tuberculosis asks the doctor is how to cure tuberculosis? The tuberculosis cure usually involves taking antibiotics for 6 to 12 months. Tuberculosis continues to kill about 2 to 3 million people every year. Treatment of tuberculosis requires the use of special tuberculosis medications. All these medicines produce serious side effects. To cure tuberculosis, the patients have to take several antibiotics. The tuberculosis bacteria should respond to at least three of them every day for up to two years. However even with this treatment, there is a possibility that some patients might die. Between 4 and 6 out of every 10 patients die during the treatment of tuberculosis.
There are chances that a patient suffering from tuberculosis can be completely cured today. But the patient has to understand the disease and co-operate fully in the treatment program. Both latent and active tuberculosis can be treated with antibiotics. Latent tuberculosis can be treated with only one antibiotic; active tuberculosis is treated with several antibiotics at one time. Active tuberculosis has to be treated really well, and patients will have to start treatment by admitting themselves in the hospital so that they will not spread the disease, as tuberculosis is highly contagious. Your doctor will watch you during your treatment with blood tests to examine your liver, sputum tests to know if the bacteria are susceptible to the antibiotics you are taking, and chest X-rays to search for signs of disease.
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