TB Patient Has Surgery to Remove Part of Lung

Source: The New York Times

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: July 18, 2007

The Atlanta lawyer infected with tuberculosis who caused an international health scare after traveling to Europe in May underwent surgery in Denver yesterday to remove the diseased and damaged part of his right lung.

Doctors caring for the lawyer, Andrew Speaker, said “everything was routine” with the minimally invasive lung procedure that was performed as a complement to the five antibiotic drugs that he is receiving.

On July 3, doctors announced that they had downgraded the classification of Mr. Speaker’s tuberculosis to multidrug resistant (MDR) from extremely drug resistant (XDR). Such patients generally take antibiotics from 18 to 24 months.

But since doctors believe Mr. Speaker’s tuberculosis infection was confined to the area in the upper lobe of his right lung that was removed, they hope the surgery will reduce the length of antibiotic treatment by six to nine months.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/health/18tb.html?ref=us

They removed a chunk of lung. It's gotta be a little more than minimal.

My late grandfather on my father's side had part of one of his lungs removed for TB, decades ago, and it was probably a fair bit larger than what was removed here. Even so, my grandfather still had most of his lung and lived a reasonably long life.

Tuberculosis can infect many areas of the body other than the lungs -- and often did, before antibiotics were developed. (For example, there's a particular spinal malformation that's characteristic of disseminated TB.)

(/paleopathologist) :-)