Antituberculous treatment as a therapeutic test in sputum negative pulmonary tuberculosis

ABSTRACT

The smear negative case of pulmonary tuberculosis [TB] are very commonly met with by the chest physicians and general practitioners. This work was done on two groups of smear negative patients Group I [prospective group] consists of 50 patients and group II [retrospective group] consists of 30 patients. All patients had clinico-radiological possibilities of pulmonary TB therapeutic test with antituberculous treatment [ATT] on these patients using 4 drugs [rifadine + INH + ethambital + streptomycin] for 2 months in group I and 12 months in group II, revealed radiological improvement in 74% and 80% of TB patients in prospective and retrospective group, respectively. So, a soundly based policy to start treatment in these patients without delay can be recommended. The results showed that tuberculin negative test cannot rule out the possibility of TB even with sputum smear negative