Multidrug Resistant Tuberculosis

Hello,

 I am Dr. Hardik Thakkar, MD physician, practicing in Mumbai. Today I would like to speak about a very important and a hot topic which is multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. I am sure you must have heard of tuberculosis as a very common infectious disease seen in Indian population. However, not all types of tuberculosis are the same. There is a particular subtype of TB which is called as MDR TB that stands for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. So, what happens is in this disease the bacteria are really very strong and they do not respond to the regular tuberculosis medications and hence these patients need some special treatments which lasts for a longer duration of time. Also, this disease is very dangerous, it can be life-threatening and hence it has to be diagnosed on time and treated on time by the right experts who have the right kind of training protocol so that you can reach the best outcome from those patients.

Actually MDR tuberculosis patients have to be referred on time now after starting one month of therapy if you realise that the medicine is not working and ideally you are supposed to do a drug-resistant and a culture test, If the drug sensitivity test tells you that is resistance, immediately it is proven. We also have DNA tests like gene expert, flying probe assays which help you to point out what are the drug resistances and which drugs are sensitive for the tuberculosis bacteria.

So moral of the story is mdr-tb it needs treatment for about 2 years and it has drugs which are more in number like you need to give at least 5-6 drugs a group of drugs for this disease and even some injections for about 3-5 months of duration. The total duration of therapy lasts about 2 years and there are a lot of side effects with these medications. Hence, they have to be given under utmost diligence and care by trained expert doctors. So, I request you if you are suffering from tuberculosis please get the drug sensitivity test done and please consult us on time. For more information, you can even refer to me online through the lybrate website which is www.lybrate.com.

Thank you.