The relation of apical tuberculosis of adults to the focal tuberculosis of children

Abstract

The age incidence of focal tuberculous lesions of the lungs demonstrates that they have their origin in most instances in childhood. Focal lesions which heal have been found at all ages after the 2nd year of life, but in more than half of all individuals these lesions are acquired between the ages of 10 and 18 years. In the period between 18 and 30 years at least 85 per cent of all individuals have'acquired focal tuberculous lesions. The occurrence of tuberculous infection in the lungs, in regional lymphatic nodes, or in some other organs of the body such as the gastrointestinal tract and its lymphatic system, is nearly universal but doubtless a few individuals escape. That focal tuberculous lesions of the lung are occasionally acquired during adult life is shown by the slight increase in the proportion of those with these lesions as age increases from 18 years to old age.3 Apical lesions of the lung make their appearance in later childhood and occur with increasing frequency from adolescence to old age (50 per cent). After the 2nd year of life focal tuberculous lesions occurring in situations other than the apices of the lungs tend to heal and after the 10th year focal lesions are almost invariably encapsulated and latent or healed. Fatal tuberculosis after the 10th year is with few exceptions apical in origin. The apices are not only more susceptible to infection in later life but once infected afford less resistance to the extension bf the lesion. © 1917, Rockefeller University Press., All rights reserved.