Are antitubercular drugs harmful if continued after completion of treatment? - Dr. Sanjay Gupta

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Tuberculosis is a very common infectious disease in the country and nowadays we are dealing with multidrug resistant tuberculosis. The most important thing what the doctor fraternity is struggling is the compliance of the patient as tuberculosis is such a disease if it is treated correctly and properly and the compliance of the patient is good, we can treat tuberculosis completely before it develops into complications or before it enters into multidrug resistant tuberculosis category. So when are talking about continuing drug is a person who has already surpassed his last dose of TB, there must be a good reason that there is not enough number of days or number of medicines that are given as anti-TB drug is a regime, it is not just one drug, there are combination of drugs which have to be given in combination, which have to be titrated and there is a guideline to decide how to give this therapy, so there are god many reasons why an anti-TB drug should be prolonged. Mostly we come across when they have done well when thy have taken their previous course of medicines but have not cured completely. So the doctor will decide to his discretion to use the drugs for any number or days or months depending on the patient or he can change the drugs of the previous regime and put a new drug in the regime for the same patient. So it is important to decide on the facts based on the investigation and the doctor is sure himself when he decides to prolong the treatment. The first course of therapy itself if there is no complication and if the patient is doing well and there are very less chances that the patient develops complications of anti-TB drug if it is prolonged. The probability is that the patient has been responsive and shown progress in the first phase of treatment but definitely there are other factors. If the drug seems to be toxic, if the patients’ metabolism is not compatible the patient may show complications related to anti-TB drug therapy. But it is difficult to say in one shot or in a few days that the complication are there because the drug therapy has been prolonged. It has to be investigated and followed up and there are a lot of exclusion criterias to decide from where the complications have come up from.