Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Feb 2: Extra Pulmonary Tuberculosis is more important than Pulmonary Tuberculosis for complete eradication of Tuberculosis from the Country, Dr. Vinay Rampal said during the recently held 80th Annual Conference of Association of Physicians of India (APICON – 2025) at Kolkota.
Notorious as “Phthisis” and “The White Plague” the history of Tuberculosis is as old as the mankind itself and even today is the main cause of infectious death worldwide, especially after the great surge of HIV Pandemic, with India bearing the flag,” he said.
Primarily considered a diseases of the Lungs, it involves all parts of the body, existing as Pulmonary and Extra Pulmonary forms. Though contributing 21% to 33% of all Tuberculosis patients, Extra Pulmonary Tuberculosis is still ” less familiar to most clinicians because of its involvement of less accessible sites and vulnerability of areas involved, where fewer bacilli can cause much greater damage, making the confirmation of diagnosis still more difficult, needing modern sophisticated techniques like adenosine deaminase content, IFN-gRA and FDG-PET/CT Scan, hardly available even at big centers and at times making surgical intervention a compulsion for both the diagnosis and management,” Dr Rampal said.
Existing laterally or as an aftermath of Pulmonary Tuberculosis which is comparatively easily diagnosed, Extra Pulmonary Tuberculosis involves all the organs from skin to brain. The most commonly involved being the lymphatic system presenting as nodular swellings called Scrofula to Scrofuloderma and forming Sinus tracts on the sides or back of neck. It may also manifest as Tuberculous Pleurisy with little or no signs or symptoms. Extra Pulmonary Tuberculosis may also involve the Genito-Urinary system, presenting as painless, blood stained urine often simulating as kidney stones for which many an erroneous surgeries have been attempted. It may also manifest with pelvic pains, menstrual irregularities and sterility in females and in males as painless or slightly painful scrotal mass, followed by symptoms of Prostatic involvement (common in elderly persons) there, it is very difficult to diagnose with normal procedures and may need repeated urine cultures and even biopsy,” he said.
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