期刊名称：Walailak Journal of Science and Technology (WJST)
印刷版ISSN：2228-835X
出版年度：2015
卷号：13
期号：4
页码：251-260
语种：English
出版社：Institute of Research and Development, Walailak University.
摘要：The article aims to determine the factors associated with smear sputum conversion in 64 patients with tuberculosis (TB) admitted at The Cuban Hospital (TCH) (Qatar). The patient characteristics at diagnosis (age, sex, smoking, alcohol, history of Diabetes mellitus or previous tuberculosis, and diagnostic's delay), nutritional indicators (Body mass index, Hemoglobin, lymphocytes count, iron, serum protein/albumin), platelet count, serial sputum, resistance to first line TB drugs, and radiological findings were collected. Kaplan Meier survival and log rank test or a Wilcoxon test were used. Significance level was set ≤ 0.05. The 75 % patients were below 39 years old (mean 32.61 years), male (78.1 %), non-smokers (90.6 %), no previous history of TB (96.9 %), 17.2 % had Diabetes mellitus. Diagnosis delay was over 30 days (65.6 %). Minimum smear conversion was 5 days and maximum 115 days (median: 30 days). The survival curves based on patient’s demographics, nutritional and radiological characteristics were not statistically significantly different. Regarding bacterial load, 50 days after starting treatment, the 2 patient´s group with ≤ 1000 bacilli had negative sputum. Patients who had > 1500 bacilli, yet after 100 days of treatment, had positive sputum (p = 0.02). Differences between groups with lower and higher bacilli count was significant (p = 0.04). Our data has shown that the main factor related to sputum conversion is the bacterial load, which will be useful to fix the case management of tuberculosis in Qatar.
