TUBERCULOSIS CYCLE

For the past 2 weeks, i was having tuberculosis class everyday from 9am to 2pm. For more than 2 weeks, from Monday to Friday 5 hours daily, I'm learning about TB, can't u imagine how much i learn about TB. We learned bout different type of primary, secondary pulmonary TB, Extrapulmonary TB, see bout 10 different Xrays a day, Do MCQ and cases almost everyday.TB as many know is transmitted through respiratory droplets from infected person when they cough, sneeze or even talk. When a healthy person inhaled these infected droplets, the mycobacteria will enter their lungs and multiply. At this stage the person is known to be 'Infected' where the mycobacteria is in the body but is keep under control by our body's immune system. (they are usually not infectious), and according to statistics many of us are supposed to be infected.

Only When our Immune system can't keep the bacili under control and when the bacili begin to multiply rapidly thus tuberculous disease develope when the patients show clonical pictures of chronic cough with or without sputum, positive tuberculin test, positive sputum culture of mycobacteria, and changes of lung X rays pictures. These patients are consider infectious and they can spread this disease to people around them.

But not many know that not everyone who is exposed to an infectious TB patient becomes infected. Why? Probability that TB will be transmitted depends on

1. How contagious is the patient you are exposed to
2. In what kind of environment did the exposure occur
3. How long did the exposure last
   

So, If u really want to know whether are you being infected by Mycobacteria, u can go to any clinics or hospital and do a tuberculin skin test, and being check further by the doctors in the clinic or hospital. But don't worry, this disease is now very treatable especially if you are young with a strong immunity.

One thing I found out was, in Russian, The classification of Tuberculosis according to clinical forms are so different from other countries. It's so much more detail and elaborate compare to most popular text books for medical studies. So much to know and sometimes it's so confusing as they may have the same clinical pictures but different X rays pictures. I wanted to write the types of TB etc on this post but then i found out that if i were to write even a summary, it will still be a long essay, so......hehe better don't write, if not will bored all those that read this.


Anyway, this Friday i'm gonna have my end of cycle exam for this subject, kinda worried in that sense that i hope i don confused certain types of TB as i had mention they are quite confusing. But i'm gonna do my best to prepare well and answer. Even thought this process is not easy but i still Thank God for the opportunity to study this subject so detail and i really learn to read a lot of pulmonary X rays and CT's to differentiate different type of lung diseases based of X rays pictures.

Well i hope those who read this will get a little picture on what TB is all about, and feel free to ask me if there's any question. I may not know all the answer (That's for sure), but i can't give certain explanation which u may want to know bout this disease.