Retrospective Analysis of Patients Taking Anti-Koch’s Treatment (AKT) in Incidence of Tuberculosis in the Urban Population of South Gujarat

Abstract

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) continues to be a serious worldwide health issue, necessitating immediate effort to manage and eventu-ally eradicate the disease. The current burden of TB in India is as high as that of more than 25% of all patients present globally are found in India, which means that it is double the amount of patients that are present in any other country. This makes India the most important focal point for any TB control Strategy and Gujarat is the state that has the most number of patients thus it is the representative of the TB both in terms of incidences as well as prevalence.Aims and Objectives: To Study the incidence of tuberculosis in the urban area of South Gujarat and also identify the reasons for discon-tinuation of anti-Koch’s treatment (AKT).Material and Methods: A retrospective and observational study was carried out in a South Gujarat tertiary care hospital. 500 patients suffering from pulmonary and extrapulmonary tuberculosis were recorded. The data were collected from the medical record department from 1st August 2018 to 31st July 2019 at a tertiary care health centre in South Gujarat. The ethics committee’s approval was taken before the start of the study. The data collected was analyzed in Microsoft Excel and the frequency of incidence and their percentages were calculated.Results: In this study, it was observed that the majority of the affected patients, around 74%, lie within the age group of 21-30 years. Various forms of extrapulmonary tuberculosis have been included of which pleural effusion, tuberculosis lymphadenitis, abdominal tuberculosis were more prevalent. The reasons for the default of the patients as observed in this study were migration for work, AKT-induced side effects, feeling better, other medical conditions, and no improvement.Conclusion: Most susceptible age group for developing tuberculosis is from 21-30 and males are seen to be more affected than females, so the default rate was also more in males as compared to females. Migration for work was the main reason among the defaulters. The incidence of pulmonary tuberculosis incidence was highest compared to the other types of tuberculosis. The second highest incidence of TB was of tubercular lymphadenitis with males and females having an almost equal percentage of Drug Resistant TB cases (MDR TB) was also recorded in some patients.