How does someone know if they have tuberculosis?

See your doctor: Symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis include fever, night sweats, cough, and weight loss. Your doctor can place a skin test, get a chest x-ray, and get sputum cultures if s/he suspects tuberculosis.

Chronic cough: Most with pulmonary (lung) tuberculosis will have a chronic cough, but other things can do this as well. Intermittent fever, bloody sputum and night sweats increase the likelihood. You can get a TB skin test to help rule this out.

Cultures...: If a person has been exposed to tb, a skin test will usually be positive. If the person then has symptoms of active TB like cough with sputum (can be bloody), fever, night sweats, weight loss, etc., a sputum sample is sent to the lab where the TB organism can be isolated. Once the sputum culture is positive for tb, the diagnosis is made.