Socio-demographic Patterns of Tuberculosis Patients, Experience of a Tertiary Care Medical College Hospital of Bangladesh

Abstract

Pulmonary tuberculosis is an air born infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and is a major cause of morbidity and mortality particularly in developing countries. There are 33 million cases of tuberculosis worldwide, 3 million annual death and 8 million persons developed active tuberculosis every year. If tuberculosis is detected early and fully treated, people with the disease quickly become non-infectious and are eventually cured. However multi-drug resistance tuberculosis, HIV associated tuberculosis and weak health system are the major challenges. An observational study was conducted over a period of one year from September 2015 to August 2016 in the Outpatient Department of Jahurul Islam Medical College Hospital and Department of Pathology, Jahurul Islam Medical College, Kishoregonj, Bangladesh. Most of the patients were in the age group of 15-34 years (61.7%). 69.6% of the patients belonged to lower income group. 50.9% patients had pulmonary tuberculosis, 43.7% patients had extra pulmonary tuberculosis and 5.4% had both pulmonary and extra pulmonary tuberculosis. The most common symptoms observed in pulmonary tuberculosis patients were cough with expectoration (96.5%) followed by weight loss (80.7%), fever (73.7%) and loss of appetite (54.4%) whereas in extrapulmonary tuberculosis patients majority had weight loss(79.6%), fever (67,3%), loss of appetite (61.2%).