Résumé
Directly Observed Treatment Short Course is the internationally recommended strategy to ensure cure of tuberculosis. However, it is equally important to review the shortcomings if any of such an important strategy against tuberculosis to make it more useful. This Descriptive study carried in a Tuberculosis Unit was to find out the treatment outcome of patients registered under Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program. The data was collected from the tuberculosis register and was analyzed using SPSS 13.0 version. Study included 563 patients, 68% were males and 32.0% were females. Category I had majority of the patients 307 (54.52%); Category II had 133 (23.6%), and Category III had 116 (20.6%) patients. In Category I, 175 (57.0%) patients were cured and 13(4.2%) had treatment failure. In Category II, 61 (45.9%) were cured and 11(8.3%) had treatment failure. In Category III, 105 (90.5%) had complet treatment. Out of 236 patients who were cured, majority were under the care of government health workers 125(53%), followed by anganwadi 32(13.6%) and social workers 27(11.4%). Joint efforts of DOTS providers cured 53 (22.4%) patients. Ensuring early diagnosis and high cure rate of Tuberculosis cases is the only effective way to stop the spread of Tuberculosis.
Résumé
Background. The new guidelines issued by the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme for diagnosis of smear-positive tuberculosis recommend examination of only 2 sputum smears. We did a retrospective analysis of data from a designated microscopy centre to ascertain the diagnostic yield of 2 smears and the additional yield provided by the third smear. Methods. Data were obtained from the designated microscopy centre attached to our medical college. A total of 3257 patients with suspected tuberculosis had undergone sputum examination between September 2004 and March 2009. However, only 1762 of them had 3 sputum specimens examined. Data were entered and analysed using SPSS version 11.5. Results. Among the 1762 suspected patients, positivity in any 2 samples was found to be 17.7% while 19% were found to be positive in a single smear. A statistically insignificant association was found between the grading and positivity of the sputum samples using McNemar test. A positive third sample was found in 309 patients. If the first 2 samples were negative, the possibility of missing a third positive sample was 0.4%. Conclusion. Under field conditions, 2 sputum smears are as effective as 3 smears for diagnosing smear-positive tuberculosis.