[Epidemiologic aspects and financial cost of tuberculosis at the Clinical Hospital of Valencia from 1986 to 1987].

Tuberculosis is an important sanitary and social as well as economical problem. This descriptive and retrospective study analyzes the features of the TBC patients in the Hospital Clínico of Valencia during 1986 and 1987 through data proceeding from clinical records and quantifies the social and economical cost coming to conclusions about the hospital's role regarding this disease. Admissions become more frequent in males and patients with current disease (class 3 of American Thoracic Society) from 50 years of age on, location is pulmonary in 95% of the cases, and 68% of the patients show risk factors. From the analysis of the economical data, we inferred the small importance of income and total cost due to TBC in contrast to the hospital whole although its individualized analysis shows an average cost 1.76 times bigger in a TBC patient as well as the fact that 85% tallies to hospital sustenance expenses which brings us to consider the importance of disease prevention.