Clinico-demographic characteristic of multidrug-resistant pulmonary tuberculosis presenting to tertiary care hospital of India

Abstract

Introduction: Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is emerging as major problem due to poor management of drug-sensitive as well as drug-resistant TB. This study designs to assess clinical-demographic and radiological characteristic of MDR pulmonary tuberculosis. Material and method: This was a retrospective record-based study of 85 MDR pulmonary tuberculosis patients diagnosed in pulmonary medicine department AIIMS Patna between 1st Jan 2016 and 31st Dec 2017. All the socio-demographic and clinical-radiological features of MDR tuberculosis were entered in Microsoft Excel and compared. Results: Total 85 patients were diagnosed with MDR tuberculosis in 2016–2017 period. Seventy four patients fulfil inclusion criteria with mean age of 26.78±15.75. There were 56 (75.67%) males and 18 (24.32%) females. Out of 74 study patients, 19 (25.67%) occur in new cases. The most commonly present symptom in study patients was cough (100%) followed by fever, breathlessness, anorexia, and haemoptysis in decreasing order. On radiological examination, 56.75% patients had bilateral disease. The extent of chest X-ray involvement showed far advanced disease in 18.91% of the patients, moderately advanced disease in 67.56%, and 13.51% of the patients had minimal disease. HIV test result was performed in 58 patients in which 2 patients showed positive result (3.4%). Sputum for AFB was negative in 25 (34.72%) patients. Conclusion: High degree of suspicion was required even in sputum negative pulmonary tuberculosis as almost one-third of patients have sputum negative for acid base bacilli at the time of diagnosis.