Abstract
Objective: The purpose of the study is to understand the sputum acid-fast bacilli (AFB) positivity rate among suspected pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) patients presenting to tertiary care hospital in Southern Rajasthan with symptoms of chronic cough for more than 2 weeks. Methods: It is a retrospective observational study. Data from June 2021 to March 2024 were collected from registers maintained by the respiratory medicine department and analyzed. Results: Out of 1720 sputum samples of suspected pulmonary TB patients that were sent for microscopy 344 were AFB positive (20%) and 292 patients (16.97%) were GeneXpert positive. A total of 21 patients (1.22%) were found to have multidrug-resistant (MDR)-TB based on sputum GeneXpert testing. Most of the patients in our study were males and the sputum positivity rate was higher among diabetic and HIV-positive patients. Conclusion: In this study out of 1720 sputum samples analyzed for suspected pulmonary TB patients, 344 were sputum AFB positive (20%) and 21 were MDR-TB (1.22%).
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