Length of treatment for nodular MAC before converting

@winema I think was the one who made the comment but I think you may have misunderstood me. My doctor at NJH commented that 6 months is the point at which they currently evaluate the effectiveness of the initial drug regimen and if culture conversion has not yet occurred, they re-evaluate the drug protocol. He mentioned that in the future this evaluation point may move to 3 months because the data is showing that if one doesn’t convert by 3 months they are less likely to convert on their current treatment protocol. But this comment only refers to evaluating the treatment protocol - is it working or not, should the protocol be tweaked - it does NOT impact the recommended length of treatment, i.e. minimum 12 months once culture conversion. Practically, evaluating treatment effectiveness at 3 months instead of 6 months could shorten one’s total treatment time if it results in a patient getting to culture conversion sooner. But again, the comment was directed at the point in time to evaluate the effectiveness of a patient’s drug protocol, not the overall length of treatment.

Thanks; your info fits my interpretation--that this is about length of time before testing for conversion, not for total treatment time.

@winema to further clarify … my local doctor starts testing sputum after one month on all antibiotics. I folded my antibiotics in one at a time so it took a while to be on all four antibiotics for a month. We will test sputum each month. As soon as I have three negative months in a row, she will backdate the 12 month countdown to the first negative sputum culture (assuming conversion). She is not waiting 3 months to test sputum for culture conversion, again she starts testing sputum after one month of treatment. With a Chest CT at 3 months.