OBJECTIVE To determine the accuracy of Ziehl-Neelsen microscopy in the diagnosis of TB in setings of high HIV prevalence. DESIGN Cross-sectional descriptive study. SETTING Hospitals serving areas of high human immunodeficiency virus prevalence in western Kenya. The study was conducted between September 2007 and September 2009. RESULTS In total, 341/872(39.1%) of the TB suspects were posit...

Background: There are data about the relationship between morphologic findings on HRCT and the number of acid-fast bacilli (AFB) on sputum smears in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB). It was also shown that existence of cavities and airspace consolidation might be related to smear positivity in PTB patients. However there is no study suggesting a relationship between AFB on sputum smea...

A decision analysis was conducted to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of programs in which the Amplified Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Direct test (MTD) (Gen-Probe) is used to rapidly exclude Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex as a cause of disease in smear-positive respiratory specimens. MTD sensitivity, specificity, and probability of inhibition for smear-positive specimens were estimated from li...

Our objective was to assess the cost-benefit of enhancing or replacing the conventional sputum smear with the real-time PCR Xpert MTB/RIF method in the inpatient diagnostic schema for tuberculosis (TB).Recent data from published per-case cost studies for TB/multidrug-resistant (MDR)-TB and from comparative analyses of sputum microscopy, mycobacterial culture, Xpert MTB/RIF and drug susceptibili...

Recommendations on the management of smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) are still based on the behaviour of this disease in populations unaffected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Studies prior to the HIV epidemic estimated that there were 1.22 cases of smear-negative and extra-pulmonary TB for each smear-positive case. Patients with smear-negative pulmonary TB were found to b...

screening is one of the ways to combat tuberculosis (tb) and should be mostly concentrated on groups showing some symptoms of the disease. tuberculosis can be transferred from person to person in laboratories, prisons and psychiatry hospitals. the purpose of this study was to survey pulmonary tb in patients with schizophrenia in rasht.in this descriptive-cross sectional, two hundred fifty seven...

BACKGROUND The prognosis, specifically the case fatality and duration, of untreated tuberculosis is important as many patients are not correctly diagnosed and therefore receive inadequate or no treatment. Furthermore, duration and case fatality of tuberculosis are key parameters in interpreting epidemiological data. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS To estimate the duration and case fatality...

The routine tuberculosis (TB) surveillance system in Cambodia has been strengthened under the National TB Programme (NTP). This paper provides an overview of the TB surveillance data for Cambodia at the national level for the period 2000 to 2013 and at the subnational level for 2013. The proportion of the total population that were screened for TB rose from 0.4% in 2001 to 1.1% in 2013, while t...

BACKGROUND Confirmation of pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) in young children is difficult as they seldom expectorate sputum. AIM To compare sputa obtained by nasopharyngeal aspiration and by sputum induction for staining and culture of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients from Mulago Hospital, Kampala with symptoms suggestive of PTB were considered for inclusion in the stu...