Tuberculosis: why get a preventive health checkup?

Since Soviet times, many people have had the impression that a preventive examination is a formality that the doctor makes you do. Alas...

Are you sure that your neighbor's elderly dad, who suffers from diabetes and smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, does not have tuberculosis? Are you sure that your hairdresser's mother does not have tuberculosis? Are you sure that the salesperson at your favorite store does not have a "bought" health certificate? I would not rush to answer "Yes, we are sure."

When a flu epidemic was declared at the end of last year, many conscientious citizens went to clinics and had their chest organs x-rayed to rule out pneumonia. And they did the right thing. After that, I had a question: who and how should inform the people that, in addition to the flu epidemic, there is a real year-round tuberculosis epidemic in the country? And it is impossible to protect yourself from infection with a gauze bandage and nasal ointment. And that the mortality rate from tuberculosis is several times higher than the mortality rate from the flu...

Just think about it: 10,000 people died of tuberculosis in Ukraine in 2009. And that's only according to official statistics. And how many there really are - we can only guess!

But we do not live in the beginning of the twentieth century, but in the era of antibiotics and mass vaccination. Tuberculosis is considered a disease of poor countries, but this does not mean that only "poor" people get sick. They just have a low level of consciousness and do not care about their own health - they get sick and are sources of the spread of infection among the entire population of the country. Today in Ukraine there are a large number of socially disadvantaged people, many of whom suffer from open tuberculosis. Accordingly, when they cough on the street and in transport, mycobacterium tuberculosis is released into the environment along with sputum, dries out and rises into the air that we all breathe.

For reference. The airborne route of tuberculosis infection is the main one (90-95% of cases). When coughing and talking, a patient with tuberculosis releases droplets of saliva and sputum, which fly 1.5-2 m and remain in the air for 1-1.5 hours, and then settle on the floor. Infection is possible by direct inhalation of droplets of sputum or dust, which contains Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is resistant to environmental influences: at a temperature of 50 ° C, they die after 12 hours, 70 ° C - after 1 minute, and at a t of -23 ° C they can exist for about seven years. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is especially resistant in dried sputum, where heating to 100 ° C for 45 minutes is required to inactivate them.

The conclusion is simple - any socially prosperous person, unfortunately, even if he does not use public transport, has a chance of getting tuberculosis. It depends on the state of the human immune system and how virulent the mycobacterium gets into the body of this person. (Virulence is the degree of the species property of the mycobacterium to cause disease). There are groups of the population with an increased risk of getting tuberculosis. These are people who have been in contact with a patient with tuberculosis, patients with diabetes, taking corticosteroid hormonal drugs, the elderly, people working in conditions with increased occupational hazards, suffering from alcoholism and drug addiction.

The insidious feature of this disease is that at the beginning of the disease there are no clinical complaints, the person feels satisfactory. If complaints typical of pulmonary tuberculosis appear: coughing, general weakness, sweating, temperature of about 37 ° C, then this indicates that the process has already gone far and the treatment will be long. I will immediately make a reservation, tuberculosis is not a death sentence! It is treated with antibacterial drugs. The question is how long: 3 months or a year; two drugs or four? What to do to not miss the disease at an early stage? The answer is simple - X-ray examination of the chest organs for preventive purposes.

Preventive examination to detect tuberculosis

Which method is better? There are two options. The first is fluorography of the chest organs, which is performed at the place of residence of all citizens of Ukraine. The second is radiography of the chest organs.

What is the difference between the method and the device used for the examination? Fluorography is a less informative method than radiography with a higher radiation load. Radiography on a conventional X-ray machine is more informative and has a lower radiation load than fluorography. Digital radiography has a minimum radiation load and maximum information content!

Another important aspect. For those over forty, chest X-ray is a method of early diagnosis of lung cancer, which ranks first in the structure of cancer incidence and mortality from cancer pathologies among men.

Remember - you are doing a preventive examination for yourself, not to find a disease, but to make sure that you are healthy. Treatment of any disease is more effective and cheaper in the early stages, regardless of your social level and financial situation.