What is bone tuberculosis

Bone tuberculosis is mainly a secondary disease caused by pulmonary tuberculosis. However, some patients with no history of pulmonary tuberculosis are also pathogenic factors of tuberculosis. The most important first infection is transmitted through the blood. Many systems can cause some combinations of the skeletal system, the urinary system, and the digestive system. Therefore, bone tuberculosis is also a major disease manifestation in systemic diseases, and there are also many symptoms in life.

It will cause some functional disorders and some swelling, pain and deformity of the joints. The main cause of the disease in daily life is some weakness of vital energy. Bone tuberculosis after local damage is mainly caused by the invasion of Mycobacterium tuberculosis into the bones or joints, which causes some bone tuberculosis pain and some functional disorders.

1. Functional disorder: Usually, patients’ joint dysfunction appears earlier than pain in the affected area. In order to relieve the pain in the affected area, the joints are often forced into special positions, such as the shoulder joint in a drooping position and the elbow joint in a semi-flexed position. Hip flexion position, ankle foot drop position. People with cervical tuberculosis often use both hands to support their chin, while those with thoracic or lumbar tuberculosis have protective muscle spasms, which makes it difficult for them to bend over and they have to squat carefully to pick up things and other unique postures.

2. Swelling: Local swelling of tuberculosis in the joints of the limbs is easy to find. The skin color usually appears normal, and there is a slight feeling of heat locally. The swelling of the joints gradually increases, the muscles of the limbs atrophy, and the affected joints are mostly spindle-shaped. Due to the anatomical relationship of spinal tuberculosis, no abnormalities may be found on the body surface in the early stage. As the lesion progresses, the paraspinal abscess increases in size and migrates to the body surface along the muscle gap. Cold abscesses may appear in the neck, back, lumbar triangle, iliac fossa, and base of the legs. If the abscess migrates to the body surface and the skin is affected, the epidermis may become flushed and the local temperature may also increase. Some may even break through the skin to form sinus tracts. At the same time, patients often have low fever and aggravated local pain. The presence of cold abscesses helps in the diagnosis of bone and joint tuberculosis.

3. Pain: In the early stage, local pain is usually not obvious. The pain will be stimulated or compressed by the adjacent nerve roots as the lesion develops. For example, intercostal neuralgia occurs in lumbar tuberculosis. Lumbar tuberculosis stimulates or compresses the lumbar plexus nerves, causing low back and leg pain. When simple bone tuberculosis or synovial tuberculosis develops into total joint tuberculosis, the pain will increase, and it is often at this time that it attracts the patient's attention. In order to relieve pain, the affected muscles are kept in spasm to play a protective role. When the patient's body position changes, especially when sleeping soundly at night and losing the protection of muscle spasms, the pain is more obvious, and children often show symptoms such as crying at night.

4. Deformity: As the disease progresses, the bones of the joints and spine are destroyed, the above-mentioned unique posture persists and further develops, the joint movement is further restricted and deformity occurs. Spinal tuberculosis often causes angular kyphosis deformity.

The above is an introduction to bone tuberculosis. If the knee joints and some sternum and ribs are in poor condition, it will cause some functional disorders and some swelling, pain and deformity of the joints. It occurs very frequently, so it is necessary to check them in time in daily life. It is more critical to treat primary diseases and some other types of diseases.