The National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System received 1,076 tuberculosis (TB) notifications in 2004, of which 1,043 were new cases and 33 were relapses. The incidence of TB in Australia has remained at a stable rate since 1985 and was 5.4 cases per 100,000 population in 2004. The high-incidence groups remain people born overseas and Indigenous Australians at 21.7 and 8.1 cases per 100,00...

In response to tuberculosis (TB) outbreaks in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s, U.S. hospitals spent tremendous resources to ensure a safer workplace. A remarkable decrease in nosocomial transmission resulted, along with a decrease in TB cases nationally. Federal standards have been promulgated to ensure a safer work environment for all U.S. workers potentially exposed to TB....

BACKGROUND We conducted a study of osteoarticular tuberculosis in patients from private and public settings in a disease endemic area. Our objective was to assess the role of mycobacterial culture and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in the diagnosis of osteoarticular tuberculosis (TB) in settings where only clinical and imaging diagnosis form the basis for treatment. METHODOLOGY Ninety-three ...

Accounting for 2.2-4.7% of all tuberculosis cases in Europe and USA and around 10-15% of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis cases, osteoarticular tuberculosis tends to be chronic, slowly progressive and destructive. We report the case of an 81-year-old male with 3 weeks of progressively worsening pain, swelling and limited range of motion of the left knee. A knee arthroscopy was performed for synovia...

Tuberculosis (TB) of the bones and joints is rampant in India with the dorsolumbar spine as the most common site of osseous involvement. For diagnosis, clinical suspicion needs to be confirmed through appropriate laboratory and imaging investigations, and increasingly nowadays, nucleic acid amplification techniques. Chemotherapy remains the cornerstone of management complemented by rest, nutrit...

Background: Tuberculosis is the second most common fatal infectious disease after Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in the world. The spine is involved in 50% of osteoarticular tuberculosis cases. Tuberculous Spondylitis (TS) is the most dangerous form of osteoarticular tuberculosis, because of its ability to destroy the vertebral body with subsequent permanent kyphosis and neurological...

Peng et al.[1] reported that the MDR‐TB burden among the new tuberculosis (TB) patients accounted for more than 1/4th of all multidrug‐resistant TB (MDR‐TB) cases in the past 5 years in Zhejiang province, although the identified rate of MDR‐TB among 9830 new TB cases was only 2.0%. Drug‐resistant TB, especially MDR‐TB, is a major threat to the control of TB worldwide. However, due to high cost ...