Hello! I am a PCP in a developing country in South America, which is basically a synonym with Tb; despite that, I don't see as many tb patients in part because most of ours end up being extrapulmonary tb (right now in my very small practice we have around 50-ish tb patients and only 4 of those are actually pulm tb, and about half of those are actually multiresistant tb which feels astounding to me). A good amount of those patients get extremely late diagnoses because of the lack of respiratory symptoms and the clinical suspicion.
Of course my personal experience differs a lot from the epidemiology of it, but in your opinion could there be a way to increase suspicion and subsequently testing for extrapulmonary tb, especially in countries like mine where we already know tb is rampant?
Lastly, because my experience with new drugs like Bedaquiline is nonexistent (yay developing countries), how does it measure up against the already existent tb drugs when it comes to extrapulm tb?
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Hello! I am a PCP in a developing country in South America, which is basically a synonym with Tb; despite that, I don't see as many tb patients in part because most of ours end up being extrapulmonary tb (right now in my very small practice we have around 50-ish tb patients and only 4 of those are actually pulm tb, and about half of those are actually multiresistant tb which feels astounding to me). A good amount of those patients get extremely late diagnoses because of the lack of respiratory symptoms and the clinical suspicion.
Of course my personal experience differs a lot from the epidemiology of it, but in your opinion could there be a way to increase suspicion and subsequently testing for extrapulmonary tb, especially in countries like mine where we already know tb is rampant?
Lastly, because my experience with new drugs like Bedaquiline is nonexistent (yay developing countries), how does it measure up against the already existent tb drugs when it comes to extrapulm tb?
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