Treatment of tuberculosis in pregnant women

The physical health of pregnant women is the most concerned issue for the whole family. If a pregnant woman develops a disease, it will not only affect her own health but also easily affect the fetus. We also need to be very cautious when treating diseases in pregnant women. If the drugs are used indiscriminately, it may easily harm the development of the fetus. For example, if a pregnant woman develops tuberculosis, we should deal with it with caution. Below we introduce the treatment methods for tuberculosis in pregnant women.

If tuberculosis is suspected during pregnancy, it should be diagnosed as soon as possible. Tuberculosis during pregnancy is easily overlooked because the symptoms of tuberculosis are easily masked by pregnancy. For example, the fatigue symptoms of tuberculosis are easily mistaken for pregnancy reactions; the symptoms of weight loss are easily masked by the weight gain caused by pregnancy. Therefore, if you have suspicious symptoms of tuberculosis during pregnancy, such as cough, sputum, fatigue, and low fever, you should be extra vigilant about tuberculosis. Even if there is no obvious weight loss, the possibility of tuberculosis should be suspected if the weight gain is inconsistent with the fetal month.

After tuberculosis is confirmed, a drug sensitivity test should be performed in a timely manner to distinguish whether it is drug-sensitive or drug-resistant tuberculosis. If a pregnant woman suffers from drug-sensitive pulmonary tuberculosis and it does not constitute severe active pulmonary tuberculosis, she should be actively treated with first-line anti-tuberculosis drugs such as rifampicin and isoniazid. The cure rate can reach over 90%, which is no different from the general population. Except for rifampicin which is teratogenic and should be banned in early pregnancy (first three months), and streptomycin which is harmful to fetal hearing and should be banned, other first-line drugs such as isoniazid and ethambutol are safe for the fetus and pregnancy. Therefore, the likelihood of a pregnant woman giving birth to a healthy baby is similar to that of a woman without tuberculosis.

If a pregnant woman suffers from drug-resistant tuberculosis, especially multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (resistant to both rifampicin and isoniazid), and her condition is severe, if she is in the early stages of pregnancy, she should choose to have an artificial abortion.

In the above article, we introduced a disease that pregnant women may suffer from, that is, tuberculosis. Tuberculosis not only threatens the body of pregnant women but also affects the fetus. The above article introduces us in detail to the treatment methods of tuberculosis in pregnant women. I hope it can bring some help to everyone.