background: early pleural tuberculosis (tb) diagnosis is particularly difficult. the aim of this study was to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of the xpert mtb/rif (xpert) (cepheid, sunnyvale, ca) assay using pleural biopsy and pleural fluid specimens in patients with suspected pleural tb but who had a negative sputum acid-fast bacilli (afb) smear. materials and methods: in this study, 134 s...

Objectives: To estimate diagnostic efficacy of visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) in comparison to Pap smear. Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried over a period of 24 months on 200 women attending colposcopy clinic at KLES Dr Prabhakar Kore Hospital and Medical Research Center, Belgaum, India. All women enrolled in study underwent Pap smear, VIA, colposcopy and biopsy. The sens...

Background. Tuberculosis (TB) disease diagnosis in Vietnam relies on symptom screening, chest radiography (CXR), and acid fast bacilli (AFB) sputum smear which have a poor sensitivity in HIV patients. We evaluated the performance of clinical algorithms in screening and diagnosing AFB smear-negative TB in HIV patients. Methods. We enrolled 399 HIV-positive patients seeking care at a HIV clinic i...

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) transmission in prisons poses significant risks to inmates as well as the general population. Currently, there are no data on smear-negative pulmonary TB cases in prisons and by extension no data on the impact such cases have on TB incidence. This study was designed to obtain initial data on the prevalence of smear-negative cases of TB in prisons as well as prelimin...

Cross-priming amplification (CPA) technology for tuberculosis diagnosis from sputum specimens was evaluated. The sensitivity of CPA from smear- and liquid culture-positive specimens was 96.9%, and that from smear-negative and liquid culture-positive specimens was 87.5%. The specificity of CPA in culture-negative specimens was 98.8%.

AIMS To audit factors associated with the development of invasive cervical cancer. METHODS Twenty cases of invasive cervical cancer in one health district for 1991-93 were audited by multifactorial analysis. RESULTS The average age was 53 years with 20% (4/20) aged over 65 years. Of the patients, 45% (9/20) were identified by a cervical smear, with 40% (8/20) from the National Screening Pro...

OBJECTIVE Patients admitted to the pulmonary isolation service to rule out tuberculosis (TB) were prospectively studied to identify predictors of smear-positive TB. METHODS History of symptoms--cough, sputum production, fever, weight loss, night sweats, hemoptysis, anorexia, and dyspnea; medical history--TB, tuberculin skin test (TST) status, TB contact; and social factors--crowding index, hi...

OBJECTIVE To assess the efficacy of the nucleic acid amplification (NAA) technique for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) complex from archival fine needle aspirate (FNA) smear scrapings of confirmed cases of extrapulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) for a retrospective diagnosis of EPTB as compared to NAA from fresh FNA material from the same cases. STUDY DESIGN Smear scrapings from 51 cases; 33 case...

OBJECTIVES To measure delays from onset of symptoms to initiation of treatment in patients with smear-negative and smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis and to identify reasons for these delays. METHODS A total of 136 newly diagnosed pulmonary tuberculosis patients were interviewed using a structured questionnaire. RESULTS The patients were divided into two groups. Group 1 included 65 smear...