Tuberculosis
Student
Institution
Introduction
Tuberculosis
My area of interest is tuberculosis (TB). TB refers to an infectious illness that generally affects the lungs. However, it may affect any other organ of the body, such as the liver and spine. This infection may develop when germs spread via droplets in the air when a person with active TB disease speaks, coughs, or sneezes.
The relevance of tuberculosis infection to the patient is that it needs to be prevented in the early stages. Additionally, the health care system should implement practices that prevent harm to the patient to minimize the chances of high morbidity and mortality. The significance of tuberculosis disease to patient safety is that it enlightens nurses to comprehend the infection more. Therefore, it enables nurses to be capable of delivering high patient care. It is because nurses will understand the need to measure the outcome sensitive to nurse staffing. This paper discusses how tuberculosis affects children and adults.
Article 1, How TB Affects Children
Thomas, 2017, conducted wrote an article in tuberculosis in children. The article mentions the TB disease as among the leading severe infections that cause many deaths globally from a single bacteria pathogen. Additionally, the report states that according to the world health organization, one million kids have tuberculosis infection, and many more harbor a latent form of illness.
TB causes fever, erythema nodosum, or phlyctenular conjunctivitis to children. However, it is challenging to diagnose kids because there is a challenge of getting sufficient specimens from a young child. TB disease also makes children lose weight. The reason is that the infection may cause a child to lack appetite. As a result, they end up living without taking meals that will make them experience weight loss. Thus TB disease will make the children have poor growth. The other effect of TB disease on children is coughing. Coughs affect children’s health. It makes children have pain when breathing. Besides, coughing for a week for a child is a challenge. It makes to cough blood. This shows that the disease is seriously destroying lung alveoli.
Tb disease also causes transient lymphadenopathy in mediastinal or hilar regions. It makes the TB infection from the regional lymph nodes capable of spreading via the lymphatic into the systematic circulation. As a result, it allows for an occult hematogenous spread in the body. This enables seeding of distant sites, which may serve as a nidus for future disease.
Article 2
Tuberculosis infections weaken the health of adults. The reason is that the disease affects the lung of the adult with active TB infection. Besides, the illnesses make the adults lose appetite (Loddenkemper, Lipman, & Zumla, 2016). This makes the patient to emaciated bodies that lack enough energy to perform their duties. TB infection also makes persons experience fatigue. As a result, it makes people spend most of their time on their beds. This ruins their future. The reason is that majority of the youths are yet to have their families. Thus the infection disrupts the progress life of the adults. Additionally, the TB diseases may affect the process of education of an adult student. For instance, when a student gets infected and fails to get diagnosed. It may bring complications in its late detection. As a result, it will make the adult unable to attend classes due to coughing and high fever.
Additionally, TB disease causes adults to face stigmatization. For instance, persistent coughing of the TB patient will scare relatives and friends from being near this sick adult. This makes the patient feel lonely. However, the patient could not understand that the people are avoiding them as a prevention mechanism of TB translation. Additionally, it disrupts patients’ relationships and friendships. The reason is that the disease prevents adult patients from attending churches and other gatherings, whereby they meet their fellow friends. As a result, the fellowship is destroyed. TB infection also makes sick patients experience night sweats. It disrupts the patient’s sleeping patterns, which ruins the progress of the planned activities of the following day.
Conclusion
TB infection is an infectious disease that affects children and adults. It is a potential threat to every child and adult. Therefore, there should appropriate prevention mechanisms of the TB disease. The nurses should let the community understand the importance of visiting the health care facilities to get tested for TB. The public awareness could also familiarize the community on the dangers of the TB disease. Again nurses should educate adults on the signs and symptoms of the TB infection. Adults also should be educated on how they prevent themselves from contracting the disease. For instance, the patient should ensure that they take all their medication as prescribed by the doctor. Additionally, the sick children’s guardians should make sure that the child keeps all the doctor’s appointments. It includes visiting the hospital when there is a complication observed when the patient takes the drugs.
References
Thomas, T. A. (2017). Tuberculosis in children. Pediatric Clinics, 64(4), 893-909.
Loddenkemper, R., Lipman, M., & Zumla, A. (2016). Clinical aspects of adult tuberculosis. Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine, 6(1), a017848.