Study of Prevalence of Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Pulmonary tuberculosis with multi-drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a major cause of concern in many of the developing countries. The present study was carried out to study the prevalence of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in clinical isolates at DR.PSIMS & RF general hospital in Gannavaram, which is a tertiary care hospital. Two hundred and fifty seven sputum samples were collected from clinically suspected cases of tuberculosis and subjected to Zeihl-Neelsen stains(ZN) and culture on Lowenstein-Jensen(LJ) medium and 50 cultural isolates were obtained and subjected to economic variant of proportion method for drug susceptibility against Isoniazid (INH) and Rifampicin(RIF). A total of eight (16%) isolates were found to be resistant against INH and one strian (2%) was found to be resistant against both RIF and INH. No strain was found to be resistant against RF alone. The present study revealed the presence of 2-3% of multi-drug resistant M. tuberculosis infection in patients attending DR. PSIMS general hospital. This emphazises the need for strengthening laboratory services for timely diagnosis of MDR TB.