TB Scare Spotlights Need for Faster Diagnosis

May 31, 2007 — -- The case of the globe-trotting tuberculosis patient, now being kept in isolation, has touched off concern all around the world.

But while some, especially those who flew with the still unidentified patient, worry about potentially contracting the potentially deadly disease, ABC News medical editor Dr. Tim Johnson said the risk of anyone coming down with TB is very low.

"We have learned from the CDC that the risk appears to be low because the patient is asymptomatic and is not coughing and spewing out germs. He is also smear-negative, which means when you put a sputum sample under a microscope, it is not teeming with bacteria," Johnson said on "Good Morning America." "The risk is not zero but it is low which ought to be reassuring."

Johnson explained that the patient has XDR-TB, otherwise known as extensively drug resistant TB. It is very difficult to treat, and its mortality rate can be as high as 50 percent. But, according to Johnson, XDR-TB is also extremely rare.

"There are about 14,000 cases of TB in the U.S. every year. But there have been only 49 cases of extensively drug-resistant TB reported between 1993 and 2006," he said.

For the medical community, the TB scare should serve as a wake-up call to speed up diagnosis, Johnson said. The patient learned he had TB in January. Only in May did doctors realize his strain was extensively drug-resistant. Johnson said America has the technology to diagnose more rapidly but not enough hospitals have access to it.

"We need to spend more money on solving this problem," he said. "We have really learned a lesson about how to handle these kinds of public health threats and I worry about what would have happened if this was a more dangerous disease such as SARS or smallpox."

Within the next 48 hours, the patient will be transferred to Denver and treated at National Jewish Hospital, which specializes in TB treatment. If drugs fail, the man could undergo surgery to remove the diseased tissue.

In Denver, he will remain in isolation. Doctors say isolation is one of the only ways to stop the spread of highly infectious diseases like TB. But for the sick, it can be lonely, frustrating and terrifying.