BACKGROUND Each follow-up during the course of tuberculosis treatment currently requires two sputum examinations. However, the incremental yield of the second sputum sample during follow-up of different types of tuberculosis patients has never been determined precisely. OBJECTIVES To assess the incremental yield of the second sputum sample in the follow-up of tuberculosis patients under the R...

background: tuberculosis (tb) continues to pose a major global health problem and thus intensive action is needed to control and ultimately eliminate the disease . methods: an active case finding (acf) survey was conducted in the urban slum areas of the r-south municipal ward of mumbai city for a period of two months from june to july 2012. micro planning for survey was done by district tubercu...

BACKGROUND The Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP) of India recommends follow-up sputum smear examination at two months into the continuation phase of treatment. The main intent of this (mid-CP) follow-up is to detect patients not responding to treatment around two-three months earlier than at the end of the treatment. However, the utility of mid-CP follow-up under programmati...

BACKGROUND Pretreatment loss to follow-up (PTLFU) is a barrier to tuberculosis (TB) control in India's Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP). PTLFU studies have not been conducted in India's mega-cities, where patient mobility may complicate linkage to care. METHODS We collected data from patient registries for May 2015 from 22 RNTCP designated microscopy centers (DMCs) in Chennai and...

BACKGROUND India is the highest tuberculosis (TB) burden country accounting for one-fifth of the global incidence. It is estimated that, annually, 1.9 million cases are from India and about 0.8 million are infectious, new smear, positive pulmonary TB cases. The present study was a cross-sectional study conducted in a tertiary care hospital to determine the extent of delay in diagnosis and initi...

BACKGROUND Laboratory diagnosis of tuberculosis has undergone a rapid change during last few years and a number of techniques for culture as well as molecular diagnosis have been used with their respective advantages and disadvantages. Sporadic studies have also reported the isolation of M. tuberculosis on standard blood agar (BA), which at one time was not considered as a suitable medium for m...

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB), a dreadful disease known to mankind continues to be a problem in a developing country like India. The incidence of people getting infected with TB is on the rise due to compounding factors like coinfection with the human immunodefiency virus and multidrug-resistant strains. There is a definitive need for early diagnosis and treatment of TB to curb transmission of t...