Although it is not rare to find sputum that is positive acid-fast bacilli (AFB) smear but subsequent culture fails to isolate mycobacteria in clinical practice, the incidence and clinical implication of those sputa from new patients has not been clearly elucidated. The aim of this study was to determine the incidence and clinical implication of sputum with positive AFB smear but negative in myc...

BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the common diseases in our country. Inappropriate antituberculosis therapy (ATT) has lead to emergence of resistance to mycobacteria. DESIGN: A case series of 41 out door patients with sputum smear positive for pulmonary tuberculosis. METHODS: 41 patients attending out patient department of Imam Zain-ul-Abidin Hospital & Sarfarz Rafiqui Shaheed Hospital K...

Objective A previously developed sputum antigen detection kit for Streptococcus pneumoniae enabled the early diagnosis of pneumococcal pneumonia using sputum samples. We conducted a prospective study to compare the sensitivity of the sputum and urinary antigen kits. Methods Pneumonia patients who were treated from April 2014 to September 2015 were recruited for the present study. Patients with ...

Purpose. The predictive factor of response to antituberculous therapy has not been fully elucidated. Airway acidity has been thought to be a potential indicator of the bactericidal activity. Therefore, we hypothesized that monitoring airway acidity by measuring sputum pH could predict response to therapy. Methods. A total of 47 patients having newly diagnosed, smear-positive, active pulmonary t...

BACKGROUND We previously reported that one-third of HIV-positive adults requiring medical admission to a South African district hospital had laboratory-confirmed tuberculosis (TB) and that almost two-thirds of cases could be rapidly diagnosed using Xpert MTB/RIF-testing of concentrated urine samples obtained on the first day of admission. Implementation of urine-based, routine, point-of-care TB...

BACKGROUND Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) among asymptomatic Chinese patients with HIV infection has not been investigated despite high tuberculosis burden in China. This study was aimed to evaluate the prevalence, risk factors and clinical outcomes of PTB among asymptomatic patients with HIV/AIDS in Guangxi to facilitate the development of diagnostic and treatment strategies. METHODS All asymp...

BACKGROUND Autopsy studies of HIV/AIDS-related hospital deaths in sub-Saharan Africa reveal frequent failure of pre-mortem diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB), which is found in 34-64 % of adult cadavers. We determined the overall prevalence and predictors of TB among consecutive unselected HIV-positive adults requiring acute hospital admission and the comparative diagnostic yield obtained by screen...

BACKGROUND Flexible bronchoscopy with bronchial washing is a useful procedure for diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB), when a patient cannot produce sputum spontaneously or when sputum smears are negative. However, the benefit of gaining serial bronchial washing specimens for diagnosis of TB has not yet been studied. Therefore, we conducted a retrospective study to determine the diagnostic...

We audited prospectively 322 cough swabs taken from cystic fibrosis children and compared cough swabs with concomitant sputum samples in 30 expectorating patients. A positive cough swab is a strong predictor of sputum culture. However, a negative cough swab does not rule out infection. Persistent symptoms should be further investigated.

BACKGROUND Sputum smear microscopy is the standard diagnostic method for detection of smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). Insufficient quality of sputum might result in missing cases. In this study we aimed at assessing the quality of sputum in a district in Central Java and determining patient and health worker factors associated with submission of three good quality sputum samples. ...