A Study on the Fallow up of the Adolescents with Tuberculosis on Mass Miniature Radiography in Seoul

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Despite the declining tendency of the prevalence of tuberculosis in Korea, pulmonary tuberculosls is still considered to be such an important disease in Korea that tuberculosis patients have been screened by mass miniature radiography(MMR). Although the prevalence of tuberculosis increases with age, screening of it has been done on students and young workers. There hasn't been any study about the prevalence of tuberculosis in adolescents recently. METHODS: MMR were performed on high school freshmen in Seoul from March to September, 1995. Patients with abnormal MMR were further evaluated on history taking and standard chest X-ray. Their results were classified as normal, active tuberculosis, activity-undetermined tuberculosis, healed tuberculosis, and other diseases. The prevalence of active tuberculosis by this screening method was estimated. RESULTS: Among 194,102 high school freshmen,388 were suspected to have pulmonary tuberculosis by MMR. The prevalence of tuberculosis in high school freshmen in Seoul was 0.20%, male 0.18%, female 0.23% by MMR respectively. There was significant difference between the prevalences of both sexes. History taking and standard X-ray was taken for 94 students and among them 68 students were found to have active tuberculosis(72.3% ), 14 normal(14.9% ), 3 other diseases(3.2% ), 9 healed or activity-undetermined tuberculosis(9.6% ). Newly-diagnosed patients in active tuberculosis were 59(82.9% ). There were family history in 31 out of 94 students(33.0%) and 29 out of 68 students(37.1%) with active pulmonary tuberculosis had family history of tuberculosis. CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of pulmonary tuberculosis in high school freshmen in Seoul was 0.20% by MMR. Positive predicitive value of MMR was 72.3% in follow-up students by standard Chest X-ray. Therefore estimated prevalence of active pulmonary tuberculosis by standard chest X-ray after MMR was 0.14%.