Clinical and pathological analysis of elderly tuberculosis patients detected at autopsy / 中华老年医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the clinical and pathological features of 21 elderly patients with tuberculosis detected at autopsy. Methods Retrospectively analyzed the data of underlying diseases,clinical characteristics,clinical diagnosis,and causes of death for these 21 elderly patients with tuberculosis detected at autopsy. Results All the 21 patients were man,mean age was(88.0±6,9)years and had one or more concomitant diseases.Cough,sputum and fever were frequent due to other complicated respiratory infection.Anemia,hypoalbuminemia,decreased body mass index,increased erythrocyte sedimentation rate were very common in elderly patients,sputum acid-fast bacillus was positive in 11.8%cases.There was no primary tuberculosis.There were 9 secondary tuberculosis,3 disseminated pulmonary tuberculosis,19 tuberculous pleurisy and 9 non-pulmonary tuberculosis detected at autopsy.Compared with the result of autopsy,the clinical and radiography diagnosis accuracies were poor.Only 5 patients were clinically diagnosed as tuberculosis.All 5patients received antitubereulous chemotherapy,2 of them ceased therapy due to liver or renal toxicity. Conclusions Tuberculosis is a systemic disease in elderly patients.Because of medical aspects of ageing,co-morbid states,ignorance and mis-perception of symptoms,and atypical manifestation of disease,the diagnosis is difficult in this population.Our study confirms the importance of considering tuberculosis as a diagnosis in elderly even in the absence of typical clinical radiological presentations.