肺結核診断のコツ

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I have been engaged in the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis for about 25 years. I have presented many interesting tuberculosis cases such as cavity, nodule, infiltration, miliary pattern, and bronchial tuberculosis.
I summarized that the key point of the diagnosis for pulmonary tuberculosis is, 1) X-ray diagnosis shows no specific findings, so it is important to remind pulmonary tuberculosis as not unusual disease. I will make a proposal to insert pulmonary tuberculosis in the guideline for the diagnosis of pneumonia by the Japanese Respiratory Society. 2) Sputum PCR examination is very rapid and useful diagnostic method. The diagnostic evaluation of PCR is equal or over that of AFB culture. 3) CT diagnosis is useful for the detection of minimal pulmonary shadow or cavity lesion. 4) Brocho-fiberscopic examination is useful for the detection of the Mycobacterium in the bronchial brushing smear or washing samples. We should suspect bronchial tuberculosis in the cases with strongly positive sputum smear without cavity shadow. 5) The rate of complication with diabetes mellitus is significantly higher than that of 10 years ago in adult male tuberculosis patients. Recently 1 of 4 patients complicated with diabetes mellitus in adult male patients.