Prevalence and management outcome of pulmonary tuberculosis in Qena Chest Hospital from 2011 to 2016

Introduction Worldwide, tuberculosis (TB) is one of the top 10 causes of death and is the leading cause from a single infectious agent. Millions of people continue to fall sick with TB each year. In 2017, TB caused an estimated 1.3 million deaths (range: 1.2–1.4 million) among HIV-negative people, and there were an additional 300 000 deaths from TB (range: 266 000–335 000) among HIV-positive people.Objective The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence and management outcomes of pulmonary TB in Qena Chest Hospital from January 2011 to December 2016.Patients and methods This was a hospital-based retrospective descriptive study involving a record review of patients with TB notified, registered, and treated in Qena Chest Hospital from 2011 to 2016.Results The total number of pulmonary TB cases was 266 cases. Male patients counted for 160 (60.2%) cases, whereas female cases counted for 106 (39.8%). The number of sputum-positive cases was 182 (68.4%), whereas the number of sputum-negative cases was 84 (31.6%). Regarding treatment outcome, the highest number of patients was those who completed treatment [130 (48.9%) patients], followed by the number of cured patients [80 (30.1%)], the number of patients who defaulted treatment [22 patients (8.3%)], the number of patients who died [18 (6.8%)], the number of patients with treatment failure [12 (4.5%) patients], and the lowest being the number of patients who were discharged (transferred out to another hospital) [four (1.5%) patients]. Regarding radiographic findings, the percent of patients with consolidation was the highest percent (79.3%) followed by patients with cavitations (24.1%) and patients with nodules (24.1%), and the lowest percent was the patients with pleural effusion (7.9%). Regarding the number of patients in each year, the lowest number of patients was seen in 2016 (36 patients), whereas the highest number was seen in 2012 (58 patients), followed by 2011 (55 patients), then 2015 (40 patients), then 2014 (39 patients), and then 2013 (38 patients).Conclusion The prevalence of a registry all over Egypt is important to study the actual state of TB in Egypt. In spite of the recent improvements in treatment success rate, treatment completed, and defaulting rate, we are in need for further hard work, which should be done to identify and improve possible promoting factors for successful TB treatment outcomes.