Host-Directed Therapies for Posttuberculosis Lung Disease.

Pulmonary medicine began on tuberculosis wards in the preantibiotic era. Its first practitioners were often themselves physician victims of tuberculosis, observing its effects on their own breathing and that of other patients. Not only were lungs damaged by smoldering tuberculosis itself but by the more radical treatments of the time, including pneumothorax and plombage procedures (methods for collapsing lungs to close cavities) and excisional surgery. Such procedures required pretreatment risk assessment of lung function, resulting in pulmonary function testing, and posttreatment management of often worsened lung function. However, with the introduction of effective chemotherapy in the midtwentieth century, tuberculosis elimination was predicted, and a public health approach focused on making widely available standardized diagnosis, treatment, and bacteriologic assessment of cure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]