Patient: My treatment: tuberculosis in 2003, cured with medication for 3 to 6 months. Currently some hospitals diagnose me with calcification of the right upper lung; some write old tuberculosis. Now my unit’s designated medical examination and diagnosis hospital (Guangzhou Twelve Hospital) wrote suspected tuberculosis, I do not recognize this result, because I was cured of tuberculosis in 2003, tuberculosis is no longer active, after the Twelve City Hospital told me to go to the City Chest Hospital for a diagnosis of specialist authority. However, last year, I was diagnosed with old tuberculosis at the 421 Hospital. Is old tuberculosis a diagnosis of a disease, or is it a diagnosis of no disease? How did your hospital diagnose old tuberculosis? Wen Wenpei, Department of Tuberculosis, Guangdong Tuberculosis Control Center
Wen Wenpei, Guangzhou Chest Hospital: That’s a very good question. Honestly, not every tuberculosis specialist can answer the concept of old tuberculosis very well. In my opinion, old tuberculosis should be the diagnosis of a disease, but it is not active tuberculosis, but the former tuberculosis has been cured and there is no active tuberculosis, but the scar of the lung remains after the former cure (some patients do not have scar, so there is no old tuberculosis) and this scar brings symptoms, such as hemoptysis, scar tissue is prone to infection and other symptoms, then we call this The scar and the resulting symptoms are called old tuberculosis or structural lung disease (understood as one of the sequelae of active tuberculosis), and in some cases, the scarred tuberculosis (commonly known as “rotten lung”) has to be surgically removed to control the recurrent hemoptysis. In some cases, surgical removal of this scarred TB (commonly called “rotten lung”) is required to control recurrent hemoptysis.