RESUMO
Introduction: The prime goals of tuberculosis treatment are to cure diseased individuals and minimizing transmissibility of Mycobacterium tuberculosis within the community. Tuberculosis treatment imposing many challenges for patients, health care providers and control program and non adherence to this regimen increases the risk of treatment failure, relapse, emergence of drug resistance and prolonged infectivity. Directly observed treatment short course [DOTS] had been evolved as the standard care to improve treatment compliance. Despite the free availability of these medications, many patients are not successfully treated
Objective: To evaluate the treatment outcome among patients with smear positive pulmonary Tuberculosis. To identify factors that may be associated with non-successful treatment
Subjects and Methods: A multi stage sample consisted of about 849 smear positive TB patients new and previously treated pulmonary cases selected from 14 Governorates. They were submitted to sputum culture and sensitivity to determine the pattern of resistance to the first line anti TB drugs. All the included subjects were followed using a special data collection form to determine the treatment outcome among them
Results: Treatment outcome could be reported in 776 patients, successful treatment occurred 87% among new patients vs. 47% in the previously treated group, non-successful treatment in the form of failure [11%], defaults [3.6%], transferred out [4.7%], and death in [3.4%]. Treatment outcome was favorable among females compared to male patients [83.3% vs. 75.5%]. Drug resistance was significantly higher among previously treated males. Successful treatment outcome was dependent on the gender, type of the patients, and the presence of multi-drug resistance using the logistic regression model
Conclusion: Treatment outcome is highly dependent on the pattern of drug resistance, type of the patient, and the gender