Not less than 200 cases have been diagnosed as pulmonary paragonimiasis since 1947 at the medical department of the National Taiwan University Hospital. Of those, definite diagnosis by positive ova from the sputum accompanied by fairly complete laboratory examinations by means of chest x-ray films, blood sedimentation rate, tuberculin test, sputum examination, white blood count with differentia...

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...

A cluster of five self selected cytodiagnostic laboratories circulated 70 cervical/vaginal smears and 50 sputum smears in a series of five week cycles. Histological sections related to the abnormal smears were also circulated. Proportions of agreement and disagreement were analysed for cervical and sputum smear reports against the original report (and by implication against the consensus); corr...

BACKGROUND This study was aimed to investigate the diagnostic value of fiberoptic bronchoscopy (FOB) with chest high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) for the rapid diagnosis of active pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) in patients suspected of PTB but found to have a negative sputum acid-fast bacilli (AFB) smear. METHODS We evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of results from FOB and HRCT in 126 ...

BACKGROUND The Indian guidelines on following up sputum smear-negative Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) patients differ from the current World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines in that the former recommends two follow up sputum examinations (once at the end of intensive phase and the other at the end of treatment) while the latter recommends only one follow up sputum smear microscopy examination...

BACKGROUND Cases of smear-negative TB have increased dramatically in high prevalence HIV settings and pose considerable diagnostic and management challenges. METHODS AND FINDINGS Between February 2006 and July 2007, a cohort study nested within a cluster-randomised trial of community-based case finding strategies for TB in Harare, Zimbabwe was undertaken. Participants who had negative sputum ...

Four media, Lowenstein-Jensen, Middlebrook, Petragnani, and ribonucleic acid, were tested for comparative ability to detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Specimens used included sputum, urine, tissue, and gastric washings. Three types of comparison were used: (i) comparison derived from randomized specimens; (ii) comparison of cultures from newly diagnosed cases that had received no prior therapy...

introduction: pulmonary tuberculosis (tb) is one of the main infectious diseases in developing countries. the early diagnosis of tb is important for reducing its mortality & morbidity. therefore this study was conducted to evaluate diagnostic role of high resolution computerized tomography (hrct) in active pulmonary tb . materials and methods: in a clinical trial study 114 suspicious patients (...

Assessment of 12 microscopy centers in a tuberculosis unit by blinded checking of eight sputum smears selected by using a lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS) method and by unblinded checking of all positive and five negative slides, among the slides examined in a month in a microscopy centre, revealed that the LQAS method can be implemented in the field to monitor the performance of acid-fast...

SETTING Mawenzi Regional Hospital, northern Tanzania. OBJECTIVE To determine the value of light-emitting diode (LED) microscopy in diagnosing tuberculosis (TB) on bleach-treated and direct sputum smears. DESIGN Sputum samples were collected from patients suspected of pulmonary TB who presented consecutively at the laboratory for smear evaluation between December 2009 and February 2010. Fou...