Outcome of cases under Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme at designated microscopy centre of a tertiary level hospital and Medical College at Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh

Background: Study of outcome of patients receiving DOTS under the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) can provide important clues for focussing on the limited resources to further enhance success of DOTS. Methods: Study of outcomes of patients registered under RNTCP at Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi Memorial (GSVM) Medical College, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh (UP), India from February 2006 to March 2007. Results: The study comprised of 233 cases (130 males), mostly belonging to 31-40 years age group (26.6%) from the socio-economic class IV or below. Category wise patient distribution was 107, 65 and 61 in Category I, II and III respectively. Among new sputum positive cases, 67.6% patients were cured while 13.5% completed treatment. Treatment completion rate of new sputum negative patients was 79.5%. Failure rates in new sputum positive and new sputum negative were 2.7% and 2.6% respectively. Among retreatment cases the cure rates for relapse, treatment after default and failure cases were 50%, 25% and 14.2% respectively. Conclusion: Certain issues have been identified which include poor sputum conversion as well as cure rates and higher default rates as compared to results quoted by RNTCP. Hence remedial measures like patient education, motivation and counselling can still have a place in improving the compliance and decreasing the default rates.