Abstract

Patent biochemical analysis of characteristics of TB patients- A survey on clinical and demographic features

Author(s): N.B.Okelo, J.K.Toure

Epidemiological investigation bymeans of an observational, retrospective, descriptive study based on the medical charts of patients diagnosed with tuberculosis between 2003 and 2010 was done and there were 2404 patients diagnosed with tuberculosis during the period evaluated. Of those, 683 (28%) were females, 1721 (71%) were males; 35%were smokers and 12% suffered from alcoholism. 53% had received an elementary school education, and 22%had an incomplete elementary school education or were illiterate. The most common occupation was farm worker (12.81% of the patients), and 64% of the patients were unoccupied, classified as house wife, unemployed or irregular employer. The most common clinical form of the disease was the pulmonary form(in 81%) followed by pleural tuberculosis in 12%of the cases. The prevalence of tuberculosis exposure was 26%. The rate of new cases was 88%, the ratio of relapsed tuberculosis was %11 and 1.2%of patients admitted after irregular treatment. Themost common symptoms during admission were cough, weight loss, fatigue, sputum and night sweating respectively. Diabetesmellituswas themost frequent comorbidity with an incidence of 7.9%. Sputumexamination ratio in pulmonary tuberculosis was 82.9%and reported positively in direct microscopic examination as 62% and positively in Lowenstein-Jensen culture as 70.7%. Multidrug resistance was 3.9%. The results in this paper show that tuberculosis is a frequent regional burden among in low educated, unemployed, lower income population,withmale predominance.Marked pulmonary involvement, notably initial exposure to tuberculosis and lowrate of bacteriological confirmation are our prominent results.