Living With Tuberculosis: Learn The Facts Now!

Symptoms And Diagnosing Tuberculosis

Symptoms of active tuberculosis include a cough that contains thick, cloudy, and sometimes bloody mucus from the lungs, called sputum, for more than two weeks, tiredness and weight loss, night sweats and a fever, a rapid heartbeat, swelling of the lymph nodes, and shortness of breath and chest pain.

There are numerous ways for a doctor to diagnose a patient with tuberculosis. Doctors can typically find latent, or not active, TB by doing a tuberculin skin test, where tuberculosis antigens are injected under the skin. If the patient has TB bacteria within their body, a red bump will appear at the injection spot in two days. A blood test can also be performed to detect if a patient has tuberculosis. For doctors to discover pulmonary tuberculosis, they will often test a sample of mucus from the lungs to see if the TB bacteria are present there. Other tests may include further testing on sputum, or mucus from the lungs, other blood tests, or a chest X-ray to find pulmonary tuberculosis. To diagnose extrapulmonary TB, a doctor may take a sample of tissue, or a biopsy, to test as well as a CT scan or an MRI to get a clear visual of the inside the patient’s body.

Continue reading to reveal how latent and active tuberculosis are treated next.