Effect of Gender on Mortality and Treatment Outcomes in Pulmonary Tuberculosis: A Retrospective Study

Abstract

Background and objective: Tuberculosis regarded as a major cause of death word wide despite WHO trials to eradicate it. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of gender difference in treatment outcome and mortality. Methods: In this retrospective study on pulmonary tuberculosis at the Chest and Respiratory Disease Center in Erbil city. A total 430 patients with pulmonary tuberculosis were studied from January 1st, 2016 to December 31st, 2019 at the Chest and Respiratory Disease Center in Erbil city. The patients were divided in to two category groups; category one, includes severe extra pulmonary tuberculosis, Smear negative or positive seriously infected pulmonary disease, and category two: includes failure of treatment, relapses, and default. The recorded files of 430 patients with TB registered at Chest and Respiratory Disease Center in Erbil city as follows 103 (24%), 107 (24.9%), 109 (25.3%), and 111 (25.8%) patients since 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 were analyzed respectively. Results: The median age ± SD of the patients was 44.03 ± 21.57 years (ranged from 1-93 years) and the female to male to ratio was 1: 1.26. The mortality rate among male patients was 9.5%, while 4.2% among female patients and there was statistically significant (P <0.001) association between gender and treatment outcome. The majority of patients were Category I (83.2% of the males versus 76.7% for females) and there was no statistically significant association between gender and patient categories (P = 0.062). The mortality rate in Category I was 4.1%, while in Category II was 15.9% and there was statistically significant association between patient categories and treatment outcome (P <0.001). Conclusion: The study concluded that poor prognostic factors that are associated with higher mortality are male gender and patient category two (failure of treatment, relapses, and default).