[The importance of contact tracer in detection of childhood and female TB cases; a retrospective case-control study in Istanbul].

We compared age, sex and the forms of disease between the group consisted of patients admitted to dispensaries by symptoms and the other group consisted of patients found by screening of the contacts. Study covers randomly selected 640 patients from the group diagnosed by passive methods (P-Tbc) and 419 patients from the group diagnosed by active methods (A-Tbc) in Istanbul dispensaries between 1999-2000. Data, since 1997 in Istanbul Union against Tbc, were taken from the central archives. Of P-Tbc cases, 27% (174/640) was female, 73%(466/640) was male. Of A-Tbc cases, 46% (193/419) was female and 54% (226/419) was male (p= 0.0001). While 3.4% of P-Tbc cases (22/640) was between 0-14 years old, it was 7.8% (33/419) in the A-Tbc group (p= 0.002). Study shows that screening the tuberculosis patients' close contact give us an important numbers of contagious cases. It also seems how to increase the female and child tuberculosis patients diagnosing.