Treatment outcomes of patients placed on treatment under directly observed therapy short-course (dots).

BACKGROUND

Tuberculosis continues to be a pressing health problem in India. The Revised National Tuberculosis Programme (RNTCP), an application of Directly Observed Treatment Short-course (DOTS) in India, launched in 1997 needs continuous evaluation.

OBJECTIVE

To study the outcomes of treatment among the patients put on DOTS under RNTCP in Chandigarh, UT. MATERIAL #ENTITYSTARTX00026;

METHODS

A Longitudinal study was conducted during 2004-2005 in 13 Microscopic centres (MC's) spread over 2 Tuberculosis Units (TU's) under District Tuberculosis Centre (DTC) in Union Territory (UT), Chandigarh. A sample of 265 respondents, selected by two-stage stratified random sampling technique, was recruited in the study cohort. Data analysis was done using SPSS-10 statistical software package.

RESULTS

For Category I and Category II patients, the Success rate was 98.6% and 90.4% respectively. The overall default rate was 1.1% and failure rate was 2.6%. For re-treatment cases, failure rate was higher i.e. 5.8%. The sputum conversion rate among the new smear positive cases was 93.8% at 3 months of treatment. For the re-treatment cases, spu-tum conversion rate at 3 months was 94.1%.

CONCLUSION

The study concludes that RNTCP is running successfully in UT Chandigarh, having high success rate and low default rate. The reasons for high failure rate should be explored in depth.