Treatment outcomes and its trends amongst drug - resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis patients treated under programmatic conditions in Bengaluru city (2017 – 2020)

ABSTRACT

Background: India is having 27% of the world’s drug resistant TB burden. To address this emerging public health concern PMDT services were rolled out in the year 2007 and the nationwide coverage was achieved in the year 2013. In India, MDR RR TB patients started on se cond - line treatment in the years 2018 and 2020 under PMDT had favorable treatment outcomes of 56% and 57% respectively. Therefore, th is study was conducted to determine the treatment outcomes in patients of DR TB & MDR RR TB in Bengaluru city Karnataka, In dia. Methods: This was a descriptive cross - sectional study using programmatic data among the notified TB cases during the year 2017 - 2020 under NTEP of Bengaluru city. Socio - demographic data, clinical characteristics and diagnostic data were studied. Data analysis was conducted in Python (version 3.9.4) to ascertain the treatment outcomes and its trend in the study area. Results: A total of 689 patients were identified as DR TB cases having resistance to any first line anti TB drug during the year 2017 - 2020 . The mean age of the DR TB patients was observed as 36.7 years (95% CI 22.3 - 51.1). Among them 434(63.0%) were male, 254(36.9%) were female and 01(0.1%) were transgender. The study revealed the favourable treatment outcomes of 56.6% among the overall DR T B patients and 42.2% among the MDR RR TB patients in Bengaluru city. Conclusion: The study depicted trends of improvements in the successful treatment outcomes among overall DR TB patients from the year 2017 to 2020, but on the other hand the same among th e MDR RR TB patients is a cause of concern. The study highlights adopting a multipronged scheme focusing on End TB strategy by improving diagnostic capability, assuring high - quality treatment and averting drug resistance propagation among