What should I do if a pregnant woman has tuberculosis?

After becoming pregnant, women should first ensure their own health. Only in this way can the fetus develop healthily. However, some pregnant women suffer from tuberculosis due to various factors. The disease is very harmful to the body and will affect the health of the baby. Therefore, only timely treatment can reduce the harm to the fetus and pregnant women. So what should pregnant women do if they have tuberculosis?

First, what should a pregnant woman do if she gets tuberculosis? Inactive tuberculosis does not have much impact on a woman's pregnancy and fetal development, and pregnancy has no obvious effect on the condition of tuberculosis. However, active pulmonary tuberculosis with a larger lesion area, such as blood-type disseminated pulmonary tuberculosis and infiltrative pulmonary tuberculosis, is prone to miscarriage and premature birth. Pregnancy and childbirth can aggravate the condition and even lead to maternal death. Therefore, women of childbearing age with active pulmonary tuberculosis should avoid pregnancy and should have an artificial abortion within 12 weeks of pregnancy. They should only consider pregnancy after the tuberculosis has been completely cured (which takes about 1-2 years).

Second, because women and their children are in close contact, active TB in the mother poses a real threat to the baby. Often mothers unwittingly infected their children with tuberculosis before they themselves died of the disease. Although the incidence of mother-to-child transmission of pulmonary tuberculosis is less than 5%, if the sputum test for Mycobacterium tuberculosis is negative during delivery of a pregnant woman with pulmonary tuberculosis, the newborn should be vaccinated, but no treatment is required. The mother and child should not be isolated as much as possible, and breastfed babies should continue to be breastfed, and a mask should be worn before each feeding.

Third, breastfeeding women should continue to take anti-tuberculosis drugs; if the mother's sputum test is positive during delivery and the baby is in good condition, the baby should be given 3 months of preventive chemotherapy without vaccination. If the tuberculin test is negative after 3 months, the drug can be stopped and vaccination can be given; if it is positive, chemotherapy can be continued for 3 months; if the tuberculin test result turns negative, the baby can be vaccinated; if the baby has symptoms of tuberculosis poisoning, such as low fever, less milk, cough, weight loss, etc., a full course of anti-tuberculosis treatment should be given to prevent the occurrence of tuberculous meningitis.

It is generally believed that pregnancy complicated by pulmonary tuberculosis can be treated with short-term chemotherapy and combined medication as early as possible. The doctor's advice on which medication to use is required, otherwise it may cause problems to the fetus. Because the tuberculosis bacilli in pregnant women with pulmonary tuberculosis are transmitted to the fetus through the bloodstream, babies infected during pregnancy may appear normal at birth, but will stop gaining weight around 3 weeks after birth and will have symptoms of tuberculosis poisoning.