How likely is it that I will be infected?

[brunettenrs]

I am a nursing student who was caring for a pt with AIDS and the hospital was somehow unaware that he had active TB. I did a full physical assessment that lasted about and hour long with no mask on. How likely is it that I will get TB? The pt also had PCP. How likely is it that I will be infected with this fungus?

[brunettenrs]

Thank You for your helpful information

[Corvin]

"You already have PCP in your lungs naturally" - I meant the fungus that causes PCP, you know what I mean :)

[Corvin]

Thank you for deciding to go into nursing, I hope things work out for you. Yeah I won't be concerned about active infection of either TB or PCP if your immune system is healthy, and your not pregnant. You already have PCP in your lungs naturally, it's just dangerous if your immune system is severely weakened. It's remotely possible you could have been infected with M. tuberculosis from the patient, but it doesn't sound like you had long enough exposure, and the patient would have had to been coughing. The standard way of screening for a TB infection, or TB disease is the tuberculin skin test (PPD, Mantoux), or the QuantiFERON-TB Gold (QFT-G) test. QFT-G I think is better for health care professionals who will be screened for TB infection at least every year because repeated skin tests can effect the results of the skin test. QFT-G is done in vitro, in the lab, instead of injecting the purified protein into your skin. Once your working at a hospital or clinic you'll probably be required to be tested once a year, and you'll probably be doing the test on other people quite a bit. You should even just ask your instructor about getting a PPD, or QFT-G test, they can probably set it up for you, or just go to your family doc, and get it done.

When you receive the test, and if your positive it doesn't necessarily mean you have tuberculosis disease, but that you may have been infected, which they consider latent TB infection. The standard treatment of latent TB infection would be six to nine months of isoniazid by itself, if your not symptomatic, and have a clear chest x-ray.

*On a interesting side note, the disease I have, Sarcoidosis, we typically have an anergy to mycobacterium species. Another words a negative PPD doesn't mean we don't carry an infection of M. tuberculosis, kind of similar to HIV patients. Also they constantly find Mycobacterium DNA in granuloma tissue in the majority of Sarc patients. That's how I ended up with a fixation with Tuberculosis. I think the two diseases are connected somehow, and share to many similarities to be coincidental. I'm also doing an unapproved VDR agonist/antibacterial Protocol to treat, and hopefully cure my Sarcoid, instead of the standard immune suppression treatment of Prednisone.*

Anyways, here's some links if you want to read more about TB screening, and latent infection, take care:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantoux_test

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuantiFERON-TB_Gold#QuantiFERON-TB_Gold

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_tuberculosis

[Victoireh]

I don't know. I suppose you could see a doctor and see if it is useful to take a round of antibiotics to be sure you don't get the TB. As for the fungus, I"m not sure about. But I don't think it is so contagious, as it is something that immune compromised people get, or those with certain lung diseases.