Urgent Care and TB

Everyone with a kid knows that fear that lingers once that pesky cough simply will not leave. After one or two weeks you start to notice that the cough starts to sound like a gruff cry for help. Unfortunately, it is recommended that these parent’s wait until after week three before going someplace like the Rocky River Urgent Care facility to get that little cough checked out.

Doctors recommend this because they are thinking of tuberculosis when they say this. Tuberculosis is shockingly common and can be terrifyingly deadly. The mycobacterium that causes this infectious disease is a slow moving one that takes a long time to spread, taking 16 to 20 hours to divide and advance the infection. Incredibly, it is thought that one third of the world’s population has tuberculosis. The spread of the infection is much greater in developing countries (where 80 percent of the population is thought to be infected) than in developed nations (where only 5-10 percent of the population is thought to be infected.

While a lingering cough does not require immediate action, if you start to notice it in combination with chest pain or the cough is accompanied by blood then parents’ should feel no reason not to dash to an urgent care center to get a TB test. Other systematic symptoms to look for include a fever, chills, night sweats, a loss of appetite, loss of weight, pallor (or pale skin caused by the reduced amount of oxyhemoglobin), and an almost nagging sense of fatigue.

The TB test is a skin test that can be administered at a place like the Rocky River Urgent Care facility or any other Cleveland urgent care location. The reasoning behind a skin test is that the Mycobacterium tuberculosis causes the skin to react hyper-sensitively. Doctors look for a reaction to PPD (purified protein derivative) when approximately 0.1 mL of 5 TU (tuberculin units) is injected into the top layer of skin on the forearm.

This reaction is internally a call to arms by T cells that have been made aware of the infection by the body. Externally a reaction is evident when a hard area that is slightly raised and has easily defined boundaries. This does not mean that the bump is red or bruised, simply that it is raised. This bump will appear 48 to 72 hours after the injection of the PPD if tuberculosis is indeed present.

Most often a place like Rocky River Urgent Care will use antibiotics to rid the body of the tuberculosis bacteria. The doctor will prescribe rifampicin or isoniazid to handle the infection. Just as the parents must wait a long time and suffer a few sleepless nights before turning to a doctor, a patient needs a long time to cure the body of TB. This period can last between 6 and 12 months. Not following through with the treatment can allow the infection to battle back. With a disease as potentially life threatening as TB no parent wants to take this chance.