Tuberculosis and Pregnancy

Pregnancy does impose an additional stress for the tuberculous woman, a stress almost impossible to measure quantitatively or to evaluate statistically. Most women, particularly those anxious for children, can tolerate this stress today with the antibiotics currently available. To reduce this stress to the minimum, tuberculous women should be advised to defer pregnancy until the disease has been inactive at least two years if minimal, three years if moderately advanced, five years if far advanced. Experience with a relatively small group suggests that if this precaution is observed, even multiple pregnancies are tolerated without reactivation of the tuberculosis. To detect tuberculosis, each obstetrical patient should have a chest x-ray film examination as soon as pregnancy has been discovered. When tuberculosis is found in a pregnant woman, antibiotics and rest should be started at once precisely as during the nongravid state. Other methods of therapy should be added as needed. The patient may be truthfully reassured that with adequate therapy, she will continue to improve despite the pregnancy, may be delivered of a normal child by the same maneuvers that would be used if she did not have tuberculosis, and will be noninfectious by the time of confinement.