Abstract

MACHADO-ALBA, Jorge E; CANTOR, Adriana M; MONTES, Adriana  and  QUINTERO, Cesar Augusto. Effectiveness of tuberculosis treatment in 3 cities of Colombia. Infect. [online]. 2013, vol.17, n.2, pp.73-79. ISSN 0123-9392.

Objectives: Establish the proportion of patients cured by the tuberculosis control program and the variables associated with effective therapy in the cities of Armenia, Manizales and Pereira. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted between January 1, 2009 and June 30, 2011, of all patients who had antituberculosis therapy in 3 cities. The information was obtained from clinical records with sociodemographic, diagnostic, clinical and follow-up characteristics. The analysis was performed with SPSS version 20. Results: We found 497 treated patients, mean age 41.7 ± 18.7 years, from urban areas (95.0%), predominantly male (69.6%) newly diagnosed (78.3%) with pulmonary tuberculosis (83.5%) by smear (79.9%) and with HIV co-infection in 9.3%. A total of 65.2% were registered as leaving the program, of which 72.5% healed, 17.9% were failures, death occurred in 10.7%, and poor adherence in 45.9% of cases as well as poor tracking of bacteriological records. The failures were statistically associated with treatment for more than 200 days (p = 0.004), and with patients with poor adherence (p<0.001). Conclusions: The quality of the program should be assessed, with an emphasis on record processing and follow-up activities in order to ensure proper adherence to treatment and early detection of failures, resistance, and dropouts, thus reducing the risk of non-healing and death.

Keywords : Tuberculosis; Quality of health care; Effectiveness; Pharmacoepidemiology; Follow-up studies; Colombia.

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