Health and Medical Care Tips
Though age old stigma with tuberculosis has educed but people still have misconceptions about the disease, its contagiousness and the way it can affect others.
Clear communication is the keystone of patient diagnosis and it begins with telling the correct diagnosis and counseling the patient and family.
It is preferable to counsel the family together to begin with, to educate them and to dispel myths and to gain their support towards regular compliance by the patient. [Read more...]
Natural killer cells are sonamed because they are potent cytotoxic cells whose targets are not restricted i.e., they are not antigen-specific. They make up 5-10 percent of the lymphocyte population.
They are activated by IL-15.
They have the appearance on light microscopy of large lymphocytes with numerous cytoplasmic granules and are sometimes called large granular lymphocytes. The granules contain substances that facilitate target cell lysis including perforin (a pore-forming protein) and granzymes. They classically express the CD16 and CD56 cell-surface markers. [Read more...]
The Mantoux test is very widely used test for tuberculosis. Its interpretation however complex. It is also called tuberculin test.
Tuberculin is a glycerol extract of the tubercle bacillus. Purified protein derivative (PPD) tuberculin is a precipitate of non-species-specific molecules obtained from filtrates of sterilized, concentrated cultures.
The test is named after Charles Mantoux, a French physician who developed on the work of Koch.
Procedure
A standard dose of 5 Tuberculin units (0.1 mL) is injected intradermally and read 48 to 72 hours later. A person who has been exposed to the bacteria is expected to mount an immune response in the skin containing the bacterial proteins. [Read more...]
Chest Xray
The radiological opacities in a chest x-ray are a result of the pathological processes taking place in the lungs. TB causes alveolar consolidation, necrosis, cavitation and fibrosis, features, which it shares with a variety of lung diseases.
TB also shares its radiological features with many other pulmonary diseases. There is no radiological feature that is absolutely typical of pulmonary TB and other diseases may mimic TB radiologically. The following features, however, when seen on a chest skiagram, suggest a diagnosis of TB: [Read more...]
Sclerotherapy: Sclerosing agents like sodium tetradocyl sulphate and 3 percent phenol in water are injected through upper GI endoscopy, around the varices. They obliterate the blood vessels and prevent future bleeds.
It stops variceal bleed in 80 percent of patients and can be repeated if bleeding recurs. However, if there is active bleeding, sclerotherapy is hazardous and first the bleeding should be controlled by balloon tamponade. [Read more...]
Common side effects: Hepatitis, peripheral neuropathy
Uncommon side effects: Cutaneous reactions, arthralgia, drug induced lupus, optic neuritis, convulsions, mental symptoms aplastic anaemia, haemolytic anaemia agranulocytosis, gynaecomastia.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis can survive or a long time in darkness, away from sunlight.Those persons who stay indoors for prolonged periods with a patient of pulmonary TB are most likely to get infected.
A patient of tuberculosis is likely to have infected some of his own family members prior to reporting to you.
Of those infected, some may develop the disease. [Read more...]
Routine blood and urine examinations in pulmonary tuberculosis are as non-specific as those of physical examination. The patient may be found to be anaemic with a normal or raised WBC count.
Erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR)
ESR is o a non-specific investigation which may become rapid in a large variety of clinical conditions ranging from anaemia to any chronic infectious, inflammatory or malignant disease. [Read more...]
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