Effectiveness of anti-tuberculosis chemotherapy in patients with tuberculosis relapse compared with newly diagnosed patients

Background To study the effectiveness of antituberculosis chemotherapy in patients with relapse pulmonary tuberculosis (RTB) compared with patients with the newly diagnosed process. Methods We examined 285 TB patients, including 126 individuals with RTB (Group 1) and 159 patients with newly diagnosed pulmonary tuberculosis (NDPTB) (Group 2). All patients were diagnosed with infiltrative PTB. Effectiveness of the basic course of antimycobacterial treatment was assessed in accordance with the following data: time required for the normalization of clinical manifestations, smear conversion, cavity healing, disappearance of infiltrative and focal changes in the pulmonary tissue, as well as the final clinical effectiveness of therapy. Results Disappearance of clinical symptoms was statistically significantly faster in Group 2 compared with RTB patients in 2.25 ± 0.11 and 3.40 ± 0.15 months, respectively (P Conclusions Standard treatment for patients with NDPTB is considered successful in case of faster health improvement and stabilization, less pronounced rates of toxic adverse reactions to antiTB drugs, faster sputum smear and culture conversion and cavity healing, signs of clinical and radiological convalescence, and the reduced number of large residual changes after the treatment compared with RTB.