Surgical treatment is also available for medical conditions In fact, tuberculous hydrocephalus is not a rare disease, but not too many patients are treated through surgery. “This is mainly because the current understanding of the disease is still divided in the medical community.” Zhao Yaqun told reporters. As we all know, TB itself is an internal disease, and the conventional treatment for internal diseases is drugs. Therefore, it is relatively common to rely on drugs to treat the condition of tuberculous hydrocephalus in clinical practice. However, in fact, for patients with early tuberculous hydrocephalus, treatment by surgical procedures with internal drainage may be a more ideal option. ”In film and television programs, we often see wounded warriors painfully digging out bullets from their bodies, as well as dirt and shredded clothing that entered the body with the bullets, etc. This is because there are foreign bodies left in the body that are prone to infection and the infection is difficult to control. And since tuberculosis itself is an infection, most people believe that the treatment of tuberculous hydrocephalus should also be treated like the treatment of foreign body infections in general, with the tuberculosis cured first before the implantation surgery.” “This conventional understanding is not wrong, but it does not go far enough,” according to Zhao Yaqun. ”Why must an infection with a foreign body be controlled after the foreign body is removed? The reason is that bacteria tend to attach to the surface of the foreign body to form plaque, and plaque is a complex ‘society’, and outside this ‘society’, there is a protective film. These bacteria in the plaque, and we often say that the individual bacteria, have different biological characteristics. For the bacteria in the plaque, it is difficult for our common antimicrobial agents or the body’s own immunity to kill them, because they cannot enter the plaque with the protective film. This is why when the resistance of the human body decreases, or after the antimicrobial agent is stopped, the bacteria multiply again thus causing repeated infections.” Zhao Yaqun explained. ”But our research found that the biology of TB bacteria is different from that of ordinary bacteria, and TB bacteria do not easily form plaques on the surface of foreign bodies, but are used to exist individually. The general theory of foreign body infection, therefore, no longer applies to M. tuberculosis. That is to say, suppression of TB bacteria, in the state of infection, can also be considered for implantable procedures.” Zhao Yaqun emphasized. Internal drainage surgery is better Obviously, performing surgery during the period of infection, as opposed to implantable surgery after curing the TB, advances the timing of the surgery, which is crucial for improving the outcome. The timing of surgery, in turn, is an important factor in the patient’s prognosis. ”But currently, the conventional treatment for tuberculous hydrocephalus begins with medication, and if the medication is ineffective, surgery with external drainage is usually used. Because the human brain produces spinal fluid every day, this spinal fluid has a place to produce and a place to absorb, and follows a certain path of constant circulation. In the case of patients with tuberculous hydrocephalus, the absorption pathway is impaired, which results in more spinal fluid in the brain of these patients than normal. And to eliminate this excess fluid, the long-term assistance of a drainage tube is required. However, the external drainage surgical approach, which places one end of the drainage tube in the human brain and the other end outside the body, is prone to infection. If hydrocephalus is then combined with this common bacterial infection, the mortality rate is extremely high.” Zhao Yaqun said. As a result, he led a team that explored internal drainage surgery to treat tuberculous hydrocephalus. In this procedure, the two ends of a drainage tube are placed in the human brain and abdominal cavity to drain the hydrocephalus into the abdominal cavity for release. “In fact, there is nothing difficult about this surgery itself; what is difficult is the knowledge of the timing of the surgery. Linna was also bounced around multiple times because local hospitals were still taking the traditional approach to the disease. And the probability of a patient dying because of treatment in the traditional way is high.” Zhao Yaqun said. Not everyone is suitable for surgery In recent years, Zhao Yaqun has treated nearly 100 patients with tuberculous hydrocephalus through internal drainage surgery, all with success. Some of these patients came to the clinic in a coma and were even given critical care notices by local hospitals; after the surgery, these patients not only survived, but stood up. ”It is important to note in particular that these patients are generally not exactly the same as normal people, even if the surgery is successful. However, their lives have been extended and their quality of life has improved significantly. Linna, for example, can now work and live normally. There are not a few patients like this, either.” Zhao Yaqun said. There are also many people who are full of questions about this type of surgery, especially about whether the cerebral fluid being led to the stomach will induce the stomach to grow tuberculosis. In this regard, Zhao Yaqun said that among the patients he treated, this condition has not yet appeared. Theoretically, the probability of this is extremely low. ”Because, for most people, getting tuberculosis is not due to infection, but to a decrease in their own body resistance. And the immune system in the human stomach is much stronger than in the brain environment where there is no immune system. In addition, the concentration of tuberculosis bacteria in the brain fluid is very low, and only 4% of people with brain tuberculosis can find tuberculosis bacteria in the brain fluid. The third reason is that since we know we have TB, we definitely have to consider TB drugs, and even if a small amount of TB bacteria get to the stomach, it is not easy for TB bacteria to grow up given the strong infection resistance in the stomach.” Zhao Yaqun said. ”However, not all patients with tuberculous hydrocephalus are suitable for internal drainage surgery, which is generally limited to the early stage of infection, and also requires strict control of surgical indications.” Zhao Yaqun especially emphasized.