Clinico-epidemiological profile of cutaneous tuberculosis at a tertiary care teaching hospital of South Rajasthan

Background: Cutaneous tuberculosis represents only 1-2% of total tuberculosis cases but due to difficulty in diagnosis even with molecular methods and non-availability of such tests at resource poor set ups, actual burden of cutaneous TB remains under-estimated. The present study was performed to analyse the magnitude and clinico-epidemiological profile of cutaneous tuberculosis at our tertiary level referral centre. Methods: All the clinically suspected cases of cutaneous tuberculosis attending the dermatology and paediatric outpatient department during a period of 30 months (from October 2015 to March 2018) were enrolled in the study. All patients were subjected to routine blood tests, Chest X-ray, sputum for Ziehl-Neelsen staining, HIV-ELISA, Mantoux test and cutaneous punch biopsy of the lesions for further confirmation. Results: During the study period of 30 months, total 30 patients were recruited with male to female ratio of 1.5:1 and mean age of 27 years. Mean disease duration was 13 months with head and neck region (60%) being most commonly affected. Most common clinical type of cutaneous tuberculosis was scrofuloderma (60%), followed by lupus vulgaris (26.7%), tuberculosis verrucosa cutis (10%) and papulonecrotic tuberculid (3.3%). Mantoux test was positive in 56.7% patients. All the patients were put on antitubercular treatment as per guidelines of national tuberculosis control programme. Conclusions: Tuberculosis in developing countries is still an important cause of skin lesions which remains doubtful in most case scenarios even after years of its advent due to difficulty in diagnosis. Clinical diagnosis and therapeutic trials are still helpful in managing most of the cases.